Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim awoke with the mother of all headaches. He groaned, shoving his face farther into his pillow, but this only seemed to make the problem worse - the pounding pointedly shifted from a persistent ache to a rolling thrum, and Tim reluctantly squinted his eyes open.

Coffee. He needed coffee.

Tim nearly tripped over his sheets trying to get himself out of bed, then stumbled into the dimly lit hall and towards the stairs to the kitchen. He blearily registered that it was dark outside, still night (or very early in the morning), and it occurred to him to be grateful. At least the sun wasn’t conspiring against him as well - at least he didn’t have to worry about running into anyone else before hitting the kitchen.

You fell asleep at 4am, a little voice in the back of his head whispered.

Tim told it to be quiet, please, he had a headache. And he needed coffee.

The kitchen was empty, moonlit shadows spilling across the cold tile floor. Tim stood in the middle of the room, blinking stupidly at the counter.

The coffee maker was gone.

“Not funny, guys,” he muttered, after finally managing to gather his thoughts enough to decide this must be a prank. Dick knew he couldn’t do casework without at least three cups. Jason knew that if he didn’t get his coffee, he got cranky (which usually ended with him storming off to find Jason, and explaining clearly and concisely how everything in Tim’s life was entirely his fault). Bruce might’ve done it, for his “health,” but again - no coffee meant no cases getting solved. Which meant either Damian or Alfred, and Tim knew exactly who his bet was on.

“Demon brat from hell,” he growled, and started loudly banging cabinets open in search of Bruce’s French press. There was no telling where the kid had hidden the coffee maker, and the French press would have to do as a sub-par substitute. And if Tim wasn’t having a good morning, then there was absolutely no reason that everyone else should have a good morning either.

He was crouched beside the stove, trying irritably to see if it was hiding behind the overly-large crock pot, when there was a sharp inhale from behind him. He turned to see Alfred frozen in the doorway, hand clutching at his chest and looking like he’d seen a ghost.

Strange reaction, a small voice in his head remarked. Coffee, Tim firmly reminded it.

“Master Tim?” Alfred whispered.

“The coffee maker’s gone,” Tim said. “Where’s the French press?”

Alfred just stood there, blinking at him, and Tim frowned. There was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but as he stood his headache rose with him, and when Alfred jerked forward, walking stiffly to the other side of the kitchen, Tim trotted after him without a word.

The coffee maker was in with the extra muffin tins and cake pans. Tim made a happy sound, and started forward with the beans he’d unearthed a few minutes ago and the mug he’d found in the far back corner of the cupboard. (Which was strange, because it was his second-favorite mug that he’d used just yesterday, but whatever.)

Five minutes later the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the large kitchen, and Tim took a sip, closing his eyes and savoring the way it filled him with warmth and dispelled the fog of sleep. When he opened his eyes, his headache was back to manageable background levels, and Alfred was watching him with eagle-sharp eyes.

He had been rather loud in his search for coffee, Tim realized guiltily.

“Sorry for waking you, Alfred,” he offered as he took another sip. He glanced at his watch, and frowned.

1:03. He’d been patrolling with Batman 1:03am. “Do you have the time? I think my watch is ... off.” Not broken, because it was Wayne Tech and practically indestructible. Tim looked up in bewilderment, and Alfred said carefully “It’s one in the morning, Master Tim.”

“No, it’s - wait, how long was I -”

Alfred stood, walked over to him, and plucked a loose piece of hair clinging to his shirt. Tim stood frozen in place, trying to figure out what was going on and frantically denying the voice which was smugly reminding him of all the clues he’d missed, and the conclusion they were all inevitably pointing him towards.

“If you would please accompany me to the cave,” Alfred said gently, and gestured Tim ahead of him out of the kitchen.

Tim clung to his mug of coffee, following Alfred numbly to the old Grandfather clock, then down the narrow staircase to the cave. Now that he was paying attention - now that he had his coffee - it was obvious that something was off. First the coffee maker, then the mug, then Alfred , the DNA test, the large, echoing, empty cave....

“Alfred,” Tim said quietly, trying to smother the dread curling within him as the old butler booted up the Batcomputer and carefully placed the hair into a small tube on the console. “What’s the date?”

“October fourth, 2016,” Alfred answered.

“Not time travel, then.” That was the same day it was when Tim fell asleep.

“No,” Alfred said, and the look he gave Tim was so haunted and sad (so familiar, why was it familiar?) that Tim had to keep himself from flinching. “Not time travel, lad.”

They stood together in silence as the bar and the screen slowly loaded, each blinking blue square bringing Tim closer to an answer he already knew. He was Timothy Jackson Drake, he was seventeen years old, he had been living with Bruce (he had been Robin) since he was fourteen years old. He had two and a half brothers: Dick, Jason, and the demon spawn. He was Timothy Jackson Drake, and something wasn’t right.

Timothy Jackson Drake, the screen reassured him, the last blue square slotting into place and displaying Tim’s face, a photo taken just over a year ago. Deceased.

It was only muscle memory, the fact that the coffee mug in his hand was almost an extension of his own arm at this point, that kept it from shattering on the floor.

“What?” Tim demanded, and his voice came out higher and more sharply than he would have liked. “Alfred, what is that?”

Alfred closed the window with faintly trembling hands, and pulled up the program which scanned for magical anomalies. “Those were your records, Master Tim.”

“I’m not dead!”

“What is the last thing you remember?” Alfred asked, instead of responding.

What was the last thing he remembered? “I was -” Wait. What was the last thing he remembered? Tim took an aborted step forward, and nearly collapsed into his chair before raising his mug and taking a quick gulp. It scalded his tongue, but quite honestly that felt like just about the least of his problems. Alfred lifted an eyebrow slightly, glancing at the chair Tim had collapsed into, and slowly lowered himself into Batman’s chair.

“It’s kind of fuzzy,” Tim said slowly, his voice small. “I - I went out on patrol.” With Batman - there had been rumors of a planned Arkham break, and they wanted to be on the ground in case the rumors proved true. Nothing had happened, though, only - only Tim thought he’d made it home, made it all the way upstairs to bed because he’d woken up in his bed, but -

“I tripped,” Tim said numbly. He remembered an alleyway, running towards a fire escape because he’d gotten distracted by - by a broken mirror, of all things, and he’d needed to catch up to Batman who was already five stories and two streets ahead of him. “I hit my head.”

And then I got up, caught up to Batman, and we went home and went to bed.

Apparently not. Apparently he died.

Just like Jason.

Tim’s heart jumped into his throat and he bolted upright, looking around wildly. The Batmobile was gone, which he’d registered when he first walked down (it was one in the morning, after all, it would have been surprising if Batman wasn’t on patrol). But he’d died (apparently) which meant that Robin was dead (again) and that meant -

“I need to go,” Tim said abruptly, setting his coffee on the console and pushing himself jerkily to his feet. “Where’s my suit? I need to find Batman, he needs -”

“I do not think that is wise, Master Tim.”

“Batman needs Robin,” Tim insisted, already turning towards the lockers. “You remember what he was like when Jason died, I have to -”

Alfred actually flinched at that, and Tim cut himself off. Okay, so he probably shouldn’t have mentioned Jason; given that Tim was apparently dead, bringing up the boy before him who had also died probably wasn’t the best idea. “Batman needs a Robin,” he finished instead, stepping into the alcove with the lockers. His biometrics still worked on his locker, which probably wasn’t healthy if he’d died over a year ago, but right now he wasn’t complaining. He yanked the door open, and froze.

“Alfred. Where’s my suit?”

“Young Master Damian has taken up the mantle of Robin,” Alfred replied, having followed Tim across the cave. He laid a hand on Tim’s shoulder, grounding him. “I think it best if you do not leave the manor, in your current state.”

My current state being alive? Tim thought numbly.

“Why don’t we go back upstairs?”

“Fine,” Tim said at last, and let the door of his empty locker fall shut behind him.

“So,” Tim said, curled up on the sofa with his laptop (found exactly where he’d left it on his desk) and a second cup of coffee. “So. I’m going to hazard a guess and say this is dimension travel.” Or a dream, his mind whispered, but no, Tim had his coffee. He was awake now, and this definitely wasn’t a dream. “Either that or I did die and I’ve just hallucinated an entire year before coming back to life.” Stranger things had happened. Probably.

“There are traces of magical activity in your bedroom,” Alfred said. He’d managed to pull himself together admirably well after stumbling upon Tim in the kitchen, and now had his own cup of tea sitting on the coffee table between them as he swiped through a tablet connected to the Batcomputer downstairs. “There is no sign of a source, however.”

He still looked haunted whenever he looked at Tim, and Tim now knew why the look was so familiar. It was the same way everyone had looked at Jason, when he first started coming back to the manor.

“That’s okay,” Tim said easily. “We’ll figure it out.” Maybe he just had to hit his head again.

Alfred hummed, tipping the tablet towards himself and frowning. It was nice, Tim thought unexpectedly. It was nice to be in the manor with Alfred, just the two of them, bent over their respective devices as they tried to solve a mystery together. That was the way it had been, after Red Hood beat him to a pulp in Titans Tower: Tim hadn’t been allowed out on patrol with all his broken bones, hadn’t even been allowed back to his own house. Instead he’d been stuck in the manor, staying up nights with Alfred while Batman and Nightwing patrolled and Damian took a turn at Robin, trying furiously to be of some use. At the time, he’d wanted nothing more than to get better, to be back on the streets in Gotham’s dark twilight, stopping crime and solving mysteries.

Now, seeing the steam curl off his cup and watching the way Alfred’s brow furrowed, the way his eyes scanned over each page of data, Tim found that he’d missed it.

“So,” Tim said, clearing his throat. “Damian’s Robin now.” It made sense. He was a fully trained assassin, he was Bruce’s biological son, and he’d done a perfectly adequate job fulfilling the role while Tim was recovering in the manor.

“He is,” Alfred said neutrally.

It had only been a year, and Bruce had already replaced him.

Shut up, Tim snapped. Robin wasn’t his, Robin had never been his. Robin was Batman’s, that was the whole point of being Robin, and Tim wasn’t - Tim wasn’t Jason Todd. He wasn’t going to despise a kid for simply doing his best.

It just stung a bit, was all.

“Is Dick - he’s still Nightwing, right?” Tim asked, trying to change the subject. “In Blüdhaven.”

“Master Richard is still in Blüdhaven, yes,” Alfred said distractedly. He was frowning at the screen of the tablet.

“And Jason? Still in Crime Alley?”

It took a second for Tim to realize something was wrong. He looked up to see Alfred carefully setting the tablet on his lap, then lifting worn eyes to Tim’s face.

“Master Jason is in Arkham, Master Tim.”

Tim wasn’t stupid, okay. There was a reason Batman had agreed to take him as Robin, and it certainly hadn’t been his skill at fighting (it had maybe been a little bit because of the blackmail, but that wasn’t the point); no, it was because Tim was smart. He could look at the facts, and put two and two together just fine.

Fact one: a year ago, Timothy Jackson Drake had died

Fact two: a year ago, Jason Todd had nearly killed Tim in Titans Tower.

“No,” Tim said anyway, because no. Jason hadn’t killed him, he was right here, he was alive, he was fine, his older brother hadn’t killed him. Never mind that Jason had told him that, when he first entered the tower, he’d had every intention of killing the new Robin. Never mind that he had almost succeeded - the point was that he’d stopped. The point was that he was Tim’s brother, and Jason Todd hadn’t killed him.

“No, he’s not. Jason’s not in Arkham, Alfred, he’d - he’s coming over.” Tim shoved the computer from his lap, and stood. “There were rumors of an Arkham break, he said he’d be here in the afternoon, he’s going to spend a few nights at the manor.”

“Master Tim,” Alfred started wearily, but Tim didn’t let him finish.

“No, he can’t be in Arkham, Alfred, you don’t understand!” he half shouted. “Jason can’t be in Arkham, because Joker’s in Arkham!”

“Master Jason is in Arkham because he murdered young Master Tim,” Alfred said with finality, and the silence that followed was deafening. Because Alfred wasn’t talking about Tim, standing before him with clenched fists. He was talking about Tim, buried dead six feet under.

Sometime later, they were both startled from their work by a light bing sounding from Alfred’s tablet: the Batmobile, coming back to the cave. Tim stood quickly, tucking his computer under his arm and scooping up his empty cup of coffee.

“I’ll be in my room,” he said hastily. “I think - maybe we should wait until morning. To tell him, I mean.”

“Master Tim,” Alfred said, standing as well. “I think it would be best to get this over quickly. Rip off the band-aid, so to speak.”

“Um, are you sure? Because it worked pretty well when Jason - I mean, well - sorry...” he trailed off lamely, because in this universe it apparently hadn’t gone very well. To be fair Jason’s slow ascent in the criminal underworld and equally slow reveal to Bruce hadn’t gone especially well in Tim’s dimension either, but at least in Tim’s dimension Tim wasn’t dead.

Now that he thought about it, maybe he should actually just get this over with.

Tim reluctantly left his laptop and his mug on the coffee table, and followed Alfred down the stairs to the cave. Even before they reached the bottom of the stairs he could hear them - Damian was speaking clearly, summarizing the night out loud while Bruce hung his gear in the alcove with the lockers. It was heartening to hear, and Tim found himself relaxing marginally. At least Batman hadn’t returned in silence - at least there was still a Robin, filling the air with life.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said, stepping forward. “We have a guest.”

That was one way to put it.

“No,” Bruce’s voice came irritably from the shadows. “Whoever it is, they can wait. No - Damian, the medbay -”

There was an indignant protest, and then Bruce stepped into the main part of the cave, shepherding a scowling Damian towards the medbay. He glanced wearily at Alfred, looking slightly annoyed, and then his gaze passed over Tim and he froze, stopping stock still in the middle of the cave. Damian paused too, and when his eyes found Tim’s he paled significantly, all color draining from his face as his hand fell unconsciously to his side.

Tim cleared his throat in the sudden silence. “I’m from another dimension,” he said clearly, his voice echoing oddly in the large space. “I - I’m sorry.”

Bruce stared at him, too far away for Tim to clearly see the emotions crossing his face. Damian unfroze, face twisting into a snarl even as Bruce turned without a word, walking away from them on silent feet.

“You are not Timothy Drake,” Damian spat, and Tim found his voice stuck in his throat. “Timothy Drake is dead.” Then he too turned, and ran lightly after Bruce towards the far end of the cave.

Alfred sighed, and it sounded tired. “I am afraid that was the best we could hope for,” he said, and - no. Just, no. This wasn’t the best, this wasn’t anywhere near the best they could hope for. Tim was dead, sure, but Damian wasn’t, and neither was Alfred or Dick or even Jason. Tim was the only one who had died, and they shouldn’t be acting this way just for him.

So Tim had died. It wasn’t like the world had ended.

Tim slipped after Bruce, his own feet making barely a sound on the familiar polished stone. He knew the part of the cave they were in: it was the place he’d visited most often, when he first donned Robin’s colors. It was the small alcove with the memorial to Jason Todd (a good soldier), and Tim was suddenly, morbidly curious what his memorial might look like.

A good stalker, a little voice in his head commented snidely. It sounded a bit like Jason.

“Father.” Damian’s voice came quietly as Tim approached, and when he rounded the long set of cabinets stretching across the cave he saw the smaller boy standing beside Bruce, hand resting lightly on his arm. “Father, Drake is dead. It is late, and I am tired. Will you please come upstairs?”

Jason’s memorial still stood to the side, a torn, bloody suit displayed in a strong glass case. It was a memorial to Robin, to a child who had tried their hardest to live up to impossible expectations. It was the memorial of a soldier, of a hero, and when he was younger (before he actually met Jason) Tim had worshiped it.

That wasn’t where Bruce’s attention was, though. The case before him was smaller, partially obscured by Bruce’s large form, and Tim wondered briefly what was in it. Perhaps his staff, or his mask and gloves. A good detective, Tim’s brain suggested, and he stood on tiptoe to see.

It wasn’t his staff. It wasn’t his mask or his gloves or any of his other Robin gear. It was his camera, the lens closed and the strap neatly coiled, and even as Damian gently pulled Bruce away, neither of them noticing Tim in the shadows, Tim found himself rooted to the spot.

Never forgotten, the small plaque read, and as Tim stared at the small case, at the camera that was still his most prized position even after all these years - as Tim stared at his memorial, he felt a strange hollowness settle within him.

This wasn’t the memorial of a hero. This was the memorial of a child, a young boy who had been just a little too good at making himself invisible.

It was strange: he’d known he was dead the moment he saw the word deceased stamped on his file. It just hadn’t felt real, somehow; he was standing here breathing, after all. Look at him. But that was his camera in the small glass case, those words his epitaph, and somehow it was only now that Tim truly grasped the reality of this world he’d found himself in.

Timothy Drake was dead. And he had been for just over a year.

Chapter Text

Forgiving Jason for attacking him had been a messy process, not least because Tim’s first instinct had been to shout an enthusiastic Yes! He didn’t want to fear Jason. He didn’t want to hate him, and he didn’t want anyone else to hate him either. But - Jason had nearly killed him. He’d attacked him without provocation, beaten him within an inch of his life and then he’d left, and Tim had spent weeks in the hospital, months recovering at the manor before he could properly walk again.

So he hadn’t said yes, when the Red Hood rescued him from a mob and offered him a hand up from the ground. He’d pushed his emergency button, and then sat there glaring stubbornly until Nightwing arrived and warned Red Hood to stay away.

That had happened a few times. Then Robin had snuck into Crime Alley (he’d been fairly certain at that point that Red Hood wouldn’t attack him on sight, and he’d been pissed at Bruce for forbidding him from entering any of the surrounding boroughs) and then one thing had led to another and at the end of the night he’d found himself sitting in Jason’s apartment, cautiously eating crème brûlée and listening to Jason expound upon the pros and cons of various makes and models of flame-throwers.

The final piece that had pushed them over the edge had been an accidental joint operation on the docks, one involving acid vats, a warehouse, and fear toxin. Nightwing had been in Blüdhaven, Batman had been in Metropolis, and Tim had spent the early hours of the morning sitting with Jason by himself in the cave, listening to him cycle through all his worst fears.

Joker, locked doors, death. Bruce, turning away.

Funny how fear toxin could bring people together.

Two weeks after that, Tim started dropping by Jason’s apartment after school. And whenever Jason got annoyed and started threatening him, Tim first reminded him that everything was entirely his own fault, and then quickly and efficiently distracted him with questions about his favorite recipes.

Two months after that, Jason started stopping in at the manor after patrol, and slowly but surely reintegrated himself into life at Wayne Manor.

And then Tim tripped, and hit his head, and found himself in a world where Jason Todd had killed him before they even had a chance.

TD_2015, the folder was named. Tim clicked on it, scrolling through all of his case reports and patrol logs of that year. He clicked on the very last folder, and opened his autopsy report.

Cause of death: traumatic head injury.

It was strange, reading about his own death. It felt surreal: he remembered these injuries, remembered the time it had taken to recover from them. He remembered the broken ribs, the fractured wrist and the cracked pelvis. He remembered the myriad bruises painting his skin black and blue, the concussion, and the massive blood loss which had made his recovery twice as long. He remembered waking up, swathed in bandages, and being alive.

It must have been the bashed in skull and shattered spine, Tim decided. He definitely didn’t remember those.

The autopsy report was only that: a report, nothing but facts with no explanation. So Tim exited the report, and started in on the crime scene records. It wasn’t very enlightening: he’d never bothered opening these records in his own universe, so he wasn’t sure what was the same and, more importantly, what was different. There was a walk-through filmed on Batman’s body cam, and a folder full of pictures: smashed statues, blood stains on the floors and walls, broken stair railings, cracked tiles. Tim tried to piece together his own memory of the event, and fell short.

He then clicked a little skeptically on the mission report folder linked to Damian’s archives.

Timothy Jackson Drake had left for a Titans mission on August 13th, 2015. Tower logs showed him returning with the others late on the 19th , and then one day later his mangled body had been dropped on the doorstep of the manor. Damian Wayne had discovered the body at 6:37am, and had immediately alerted the rest of the household.

The funeral was held one week later.

It wasn’t easy to find information on the Red Hood. Tim first searched the primary mission reports surrounding his death, with no luck - next were the patrol reports, which gave him no information either. All mention of the Red Hood disappeared, and Tim eventually had to sneak down to the cave (avoiding everyone, he was trying to give them space) and log into the main servers from the Batcomputer to tunnel into the GCPD records of arrest.

Half an hour later, Tim realized there was no record of Red Hood’s arrest in Batman’s logs because Batman hadn’t caught him; it was the GCPD who had brought Red Hood in, a few weeks after declaring a city-wide manhunt. Commissioner Gordon had headed the task-force, and Red Hood had been locked up in Arkham within the month.

For a while, all mention of Robin disappeared from social media and news channels. Batman dropped underground, viciously going after all the worst gangs and organizations of Gotham’s underworld and for the most part leaving the criminals above ground alone. Nightwing retreated to Blüdhaven, coming less and less frequently to the other side of the harbor. And then, four months later, a story: Robin saves school children from mass shooting. And, slowly, Robin re-emerged.

Tim pulled up a working document, and started compiling all the evidence he had about his death, and the Red Hood’s subsequent capture and incarceration.

He was several hours in when there was the light sound of footsteps behind him, and he tore his eyes from the screen to see Bruce walking slowly across the cave, two mugs in his large hands. He placed one before Tim, who gratefully wrapped his fingers around it and inhaled the bittersweet smell of freshly-brewed coffee.

“Thanks, Bruce,” he said, taking a sip. He glanced at the man, then at the monitor where he had all his files pulled up. “Sorry about - I figured it was alright to use the computer, but I probably should have asked.”

Bruce took a sip of his own coffee, his eyes scanning shrewdly over the files drawn up before them. “You’re looking into the Red Hood,” he observed after a moment. “Are you close, in your universe?”

“We’re getting there,” Tim said warily. Bruce’s face was blank, which was never a good sign, but his body language was relaxed - he wasn’t about to start demanding explanations. “It’s taken a while, but ... he’s my brother.” He glanced at the screen, at the news article he had pulled up with the photo of Red Hood being pushed into an armored van. “I just want to know what happened.”

Bruce didn’t say anything for a moment, only surveyed Tim’s work with impassive eyes. Then he said “The man who came back was not the boy who died. I expect that was the difference, in your universe - there was some of Jason that remained.” He took another sip of his coffee, then added “You are welcome to stay here with us at the manor, for as long as it takes. I will do everything in my power to get you home as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Tim said softly, and Bruce hummed.

“Don’t overwork yourself,” he said after a moment. “Alfred expects us both for lunch in half an hour.”

Tim knew the “alternate dimension” problem wasn’t going to be an easy fix. He knew that it would take at least a day, maybe a week to run all the tests and consult their resident magicians and figure out how to send him back. And it wasn’t like Batman could just drop everything to help him, so while he waited for diagnostics to run their course and for Constantine to finish moping around his bedroom, Tim decided to investigate this new world he had found himself in.

It wasn’t hard to leave. Bruce was with Alfred in the study, Damian had disappeared into his room, and no one seemed to care where Tim went. So he pulled on his warm black sweater and his favorite black cargo pants (they were still here, still just where he’d left them) and slipped out the door into the cool October air.

He walked the winding path through the trees to his house, muscle memory taking over where the trail, well-trod in his universe, disappeared here and there into the undergrowth. When he stepped out of the spindly trees, he found a house long abandoned: the door was locked, the shutters on all the windows nailed shut, and a For Sale sign swung lightly on the lawn, too far from any road to be of actual use. The grass was overgrown, the brambles tentatively poking fingers over the edge of the porch, and when Tim reached for the loose board on the second step he found the spare key hidden exactly where he’d left it.

Tim unlocked the door, and slipped inside.

The entire house was coated in a thin layer of fine dust. It stirred up into the air, and Tim sneezed five times before he made it to the stairs, sniffing aggressively and wiping at his streaming eyes. No one had been in here for months, at least, and no one had bothered to put dust covers on anything.

Tim remembered coming across a closed door in Wayne Manor, once. He’d peaked inside, curious, and seen that all the furniture was draped in ghost-white sheets.

His room, just like his room in the manor, was exactly as he’d left it. The rubik’s cubes sat fading on the windowsill, textbooks were strewn haphazardly across the floor, and his blankets were a tangled mess at the foot of his bed. He’d received the call in the middle of a mid-afternoon nap, Tim remembered. He’d run straight to the manor, down to the cave without pausing to tell anyone where he was going. He’d typed a hasty note on the Batcomputer, pulled on his suit, and run off to meet up with the Titans.

A week later, he’d crashed into a nice soft bed in Titan’s Tower. Two hours after that, he’d awoken to alarms, and an angry teenager with a snarl on his face and hatred in his eyes.

Dick had been beside Tim’s bed in the hospital when he woke up. His eyes had been terrible, rimmed with shadows and grief, and when he saw that Tim was awake he leaned forward, carefully and gently pulling Tim into a hug.

“You didn’t say goodbye,” he’d whispered, voice rough with anger and fear, and Tim had held onto him as best he could with his heavy, drugged arms, too exhausted to say anything in reply.

Tim doubted he’d said goodbye in this dimension, either. The only difference, of course, was that he’d never gotten the chance to say hello again.

Tim shook himself from his thoughts, letting his own memories fall to the floor of a dead boy’s room. He walked over to his desk, pulling it open and slipping five hundred dollars into his pocket. He took his old lock picks and his trusty taser, and his dusty stalker hat, and after a moment he reached over to snag the old Polaroid off the desk. If he was going to dress up as a stalker again (and he would have to if he wanted to go out at night, he couldn’t be Robin for obvious reasons), he might as well do it properly.

Then Tim left, locked the door behind him, and placed the key back under the steps.

One moment Tim was by himself, running through exercises with his staff on the training mats. Then he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and he spun, staff up to see Damian standing at the edge of the training arena, dressed in jeans and a strangely familiar green hoodie, scowl firmly in place.

Tim didn’t lower his staff. “Damian,” he said warily.

“You are an impostor,” Damian said abruptly. “I don’t care what you say, you are not Timothy Drake.”

“I’m from another dimension -” Tim started, but Damian cut him off.

“If you cared for Father at all, you would never have come here.”

Why was Damian always antagonizing him? Was there not a single universe in which they could just get along? “I didn’t come here on purpose,” Tim said sharply. “Trust me, I’m just as happy about all this as you are. I’m trying to get home.”

Damian stepped slowly onto the mats, each step deliberate as he walked up to Tim and stood before him, head tilted up slightly to compensate for his smaller stature. Tim adjusted his grip on his staff and watched the younger boy warily.

“Father may have forgotten,” Damian said coolly, “that Jason Todd once came back from the dead. He may have forgotten that he underestimated the Red Hood, and that it cost him Drake’s life.” His eyes, when they met Tim’s, were cold as ice. “I will not be letting him make the same mistake twice.”

Then he turned and walked away, leaving Tim standing on the mats, still gripping his staff tightly in his hands. And Tim was struck once again with how unfair all of this was: he’d been making progress. Damian had stopped trying to murder him - he’d stopped sabotaging his every move, he’d even offered a grudging compliment the last time Tim solved one of the Riddler’s riddles with thirty seconds to spare. And now here Tim was, back at the beginning, trying to understand why his older brother hated him and why his younger brother despised him, and why he could never seem to do anything right.

It wasn’t until nearly four hours later, as he was digging through his clothes for something warm to wear, that Tim realized why Damian’s hoodie had looked so familiar.

It was ridiculously hard to find daffodils in October. His first stop was the garden, trotting over to the big apple tree and then staring at the damp, leaf-strewn ground and feeling increasingly like the brainless idiot he was.

Of course there weren’t any daffodils in the garden. It was October.

His next stop was the florist just outside the city perimeter. “Daffodils?” he asked, and the man behind the counter gave him a suspicious look and lowered his hands under the desk. Tim decided to leave before things escalated.

“I need some daffodils,” he told the flower stand near the public gardens, and “Do you have any daffodils?” to the florist near King Station, and finally “You don’t have daffodils, do you?” and the woman at the kiosk said “I do for a hundred bucks.”

So Tim walked away from Gotham Central Flower Shop with a small bundle of daffodils held carefully in his hands and one hundred dollars less in his pocket.

He didn’t even check the Wayne family plot when he got back to the manor. He hopped the low stone wall, ducked and weaved his way through a small thicket of mountain holly, and stepped into the Drake family plot where his mother and father had been buried before him.

Timothy J. Drake, his headstone read. 1999 - 2015. Son, brother, friend.

Tim carefully set the daffodils on the cool leaves covering the ground. The plot was well tended, unlike the rest of the grounds: the grass was trimmed, the graves swept clean, a narrow path barely worn from the entrance to where Tim was standing before his grave. People clearly came here often, and Tim felt an unexpected rush of warmth. Somehow he’d never considered that people might visit his grave: it had never occurred to him that anyone would care.

He stood for a while in silence, staring at the bright yellow flowers on the soft brown earth. After a while he shifted, and coughed.

“Hi, Tim,” he said softly, and somehow it didn’t feel as awkward as he’d thought it would. “It’s me. I - look, I don’t know why you’re dead. But it wasn’t Jason’s fault, okay?”

Well, okay. That objectively wasn’t true, but - it was important. It was important to Tim that the dead boy beneath his feet know that it hadn’t needed to end this way. That there was a world in which he lived, and his Robin didn’t kill him.

“We’re friends,” Tim told him. “Brothers, even, just like we always dreamed. And I’m sorry he killed you, but he shouldn’t be in Arkham. He could go to Blackgate, or - or anywhere else, I don’t care.” Tim huffed out a breath, the fog curling away from him in the afternoon shade. “Just not Arkham. You know he doesn’t deserve Arkham.”

The grave didn’t answer, and Tim stood silent for a moment, biting his lip.

“I don’t know why he killed you,” he whispered at last, because it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Tim got to live, while this Tim died. It wasn’t fair that his childhood hero had tried to murder him, it wasn’t fair that his older brother was locked away with the very monster that had once killed him. It wasn’t fair that Tim’s family was fractured, just because he was dumb enough to die.

“You shouldn’t have died,” Tim said abruptly. “It was stupid, a stupid thing to do.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” a voice said lightly behind him, and Tim startled so badly he almost fell over. A hand reached out to steady him, and Tim knew who it was before he’d even turned around.

“Dick,” he said in surprise, relaxing despite himself. “I thought you were in Blüdhaven.”

“I was,” Dick said. He flashed a strained smile at Tim, lowering his hand before turning his gaze back to the grave before them. “I heard we had a visitor.”

Tim fell silent, shoving his hands into his pockets and tucking his chin to his chest.

“Why daffodils?” Dick asked eventually, voice quiet.

Tim shifted. “They’re for spring. For - for new beginnings. For Robin.”

Dick let out a puff of laughter, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. “He should never have been Robin,” he said harshly, and Tim glanced over to see his face tight, guilt and anger and grief all warring for purchase on his face.

“He loved being Robin,” Tim said quietly. “He loved it more than anything.”

Dick cleared his throat, looking away. “So what happened?” he asked after a moment, tone forced into a normal register. “Alfred said you’re from another dimension.”

“I don’t know,” Tim said, letting his cheeks puff out with his breath. “We’re trying to figure it out, so I can get back. I was patrolling with B when it happened; the last thing I remember is hitting my head, but you know - that’s not exactly an unusual occurrence.”

Dick was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he couldn’t quite hide the tremor in his voice. “That’s not what I meant.”

Oh. Tim’s gaze snapped back to the gravestone before him, and the daffodils spilling yellow and green across the ground.

“He didn’t kill me,” Tim said quietly. “Jason attacked me in the tower, but ... he stopped. I don’t know why he didn’t, in this universe.”

“That’s it?” Dick said, and now he sounded angry. “Red Hood just - he stopped? What the hell does that mean, he stopped?”

“I don’t know,” Tim said unhappily. “I don’t know, but - I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I died, and I’m sorry it was Jason who did it.”

“Just - just stop,” Dick said, turning away. “Stop apologizing, and stop saying his name.”

Tim reached out, his hand landing light on Dick’s arm, and the man flinched like he’d been struck. Tim stilled, but when Dick didn’t pull away he stepped forward, wrapping his arms around his eldest brother. A second later strong arms folded around him and then Dick was crying, shuddering sobs shaking against Tim’s arms like he would fall apart if Tim let go.

“I loved you,” Tim said, standing over his grave and holding his brother in his arms. “I loved you all so much, and I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye.”

“Come back to the manor,” Tim offered, watching Dick clip his motorcycle helmet under his chin. “I’m sure Bruce would like to see you.”

“I’m sure he would,” Dick said shortly, a dark look flashing briefly across his face. He caught Tim’s eye and sighed. “Ever since you - ever since Tim died, we haven’t really seen eye to eye on a lot of things,” he explained. “It’s not your fault, it’s just - it was inevitable, I guess.”

“Are you going back to Blüdhaven, then?” Tim asked, trying not to sound too disappointed.

“I’ve got a room at the Hilton on the edge of town,” Dick said, giving him a small smile. “I’ll be there for the next few days if you need anything, or if you just feel like stopping by.”

Chapter Text

Five days passed, and they still weren’t making any progress, and Tim was maybe starting to panic a little bit.

“I can’t stay here,” he said desperately. “I need to get back home. Before people start to worry!”

Of course, it was probably already too late for that. Because their timelines were so close, Bruce had decided that there was no reason not to assume that time in Tim’s dimension wasn’t carrying on without him, and Tim was forced to agree. It made him want to shout, to yell at them that he had a family. He had Bruce and Alfred and Dick and Damian and Jason, and if Tim didn’t come home they would all descend into whatever messed up reality this was that Tim had suddenly found himself trapped in.

Apparently the world did end if Tim died. Apparently he was Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on his back.

But despite their best efforts, despite Bruce’s calm reassurances and Damian’s grudging suggestions and Alfred’s shrewd observations, they were making no progress. And that made Tim lonely and miserable, so one night he pulled on his old clothes and his black cap and tossed his Polaroid and his taser in his backpack. Then he snuck out the window, down the old oak tree, and headed off into the Gotham City night.

He couldn’t make any progress on his own case. But maybe he could break some ground on the mystery that was Jason Todd. Why was this world different? What had happened to make Jason kill him, where in Tim’s own dimension he had stopped? Was this something Tim could fix?

Step one had been to draw up a plan in an encrypted file, and to acquire the appropriate gear. Step two was to break into Arkham Asylum.

The ease with which he broke into Arkham would have been laughable, if it had been even remotely funny. As it was, Tim started compiling a list of security upgrades in his head halfway through, so that he could later write it all out for Bruce to send to the mayor.

Like that would actually do anything.

Once he found the hallway with the Red Hood’s cell, he remotely looped the cameras so that he could drop to the floor, then set a timer on his watch. Security would likely receive an alert within five minutes that someone had tampered with the security feed, and Tim wanted to be well out of the way before anyone came looking. He only had a few questions for Jason, he just wanted to be sure - hopefully it wouldn’t take long.

Jason was lying on his cot, arms crossed under his head as he studied the ceiling with a bored expression on his face. His hair was longer than it was in Tim’s dimension, the black hair curling slightly beneath his ears and the single lock of white falling across his left eye.

“Jason,” Tim whispered, stepping up to the barred window on the door. “Jason!”

Jason lifted his head, gave Tim a slightly unimpressed look, then went back to staring at the ceiling. “Go away,” he whispered, so quiet that Tim barely caught it.

“I don’t have very long,” Tim said, glancing at his watch. “I just need to know - was it an accident?”

Jason didn’t say anything.

“Did you mean to kill me?” Tim pressed, glancing over his shoulder. “It’s important.”

“It’s not important,” Jason muttered, and Tim sighed impatiently.

“So why did you do it, then?”

Again Jason didn’t say anything, and Tim’s eyes darted down to his watch. Three minutes. He looked back up, fingers curling around the cool metal bars as he leaned forward. “Jason.” Jason ignored him. “Jason,” Tim hissed, a little louder. “Why did you kill me?”

Jason sighed, lifting an arm up to cover his face. “You replaced me,” he whispered back, his words lacking the bite they normally carried. “What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

“You could have stopped,” Tim said after a moment. “You could have beaten me, and then left.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, his voice hollow. “Sure thing, Drake. Like you gave me a choice.”

Jason really wasn’t being helpful. But that was nothing new, so Tim took a deep breath and plowed onward. “I just need to be sure,” he said. “I need to know that I can trust you.” I need to know that you won’t kill the rest of my family as well.

“Jesus fuck,” Jason groaned, his voice muffled by the arm still over his face. “Just leave me the fuck alone, Drake, I don’t need you here. I’ve got plenty of bad dreams waiting in line without you cutting in front of them all.”

“What about Felipe,” Tim asked abruptly. “What about Felipe Garzonas, did you mean to kill him?”

Jason stiffened, finally dropping his arm from his face. He rolled over, slowly pushing himself upright to get a better look at Tim, his gaze wary and confused.

“No, Replacement,” he said slowly, his gaze never leaving Tim’s face. “I never killed him.”

“Okay,” Tim said. This was okay, he could work with this. He didn’t know what had happened; he didn’t know why this world’s Tim had died, what had gone differently in that tower, but he knew that this Jason must be the same Jason from his world. Jason wasn’t a murderer. (Well. He wasn’t a murderer of Robins.) “Okay, Jason, I believe you. Just hold tight a little longer, okay? I’m going to make sure everything’s okay, I promise.” Just how he would do that Tim wasn’t quite sure yet, but he could figure it out later.

Jason stayed silent, watching him with an oddly spooked look on his face.

“Jason,” Tim repeated, resisting the urge to reach through the bars and grab Jason’s hand. “I promise, okay?”

Jason blinked, and then Tim jumped as his watch vibrated against his wrist, signaling that his time was up. “Jason!”

Jason turned away without a word, arms wrapped tightly around himself, and Tim let out a breathless curse before stepping back, letting the shadows drag him into darkness.

It wasn’t the best hotel on the North End, but it definitely wasn’t the worst. Tim walked past the main desk, hood pulled up and hands in his pockets (the very image of sketchy, but again - iffy hotel) and into the elevator, and pressed the button for the sixth floor.

Dick opened the door, and the smile on his face as he greeted Tim was so familiar that for a moment Tim allowed himself to relax. Bruce watched him with faraway eyes, Damian with unconcealed hatred, Alfred with a weariness that made Tim want to cry. And he’d been feeling antsy (and more than a little homesick) after his conversation with Jason, so instead of returning to the manor he’d decided to pay Dick a visit.

“Tim,” Dick said, stepping back. “Come on in. How are you?”

“I’m good,” Tim said, pushing his hood back as he stepped into the small room. Two beds, desk, TV, mini-fridge, bathroom. One bed was still made, clothes scattered across it in disarray, while the other bed was a twisted confusion of sheets and pillows. “Nice room.”

“Yeah, it’s not bad,” Dick said easily. Tim perched carefully on the edge to the nearest bed, and Dick stepped back to lean against the desk. He tilted his head, and smiled, and Tim felt the last of his tension drain away. “How’s it been at the manor?”

Tim shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, it’s weird; everything feels the same, exactly the same, but....”

He trailed off, trying to think of a good way to explain how he felt. It was strange - everything was familiar, nothing different or out of place, but wherever he went there was just this feeling. Like if he stepped too far to one side, he would topple off an invisible cliff. Like he was standing in his childhood home, blindfolded, and it was simple, easy; he'd grown up here, he knew exactly where everything was, but somehow even the simple act of breathing felt like it would bring him tumbling down.

Tim felt fragile.

“Have you made any progress on figuring out what got you here?”

Tim blinked, and realized that he’d been silent too long. “No,” he said, and just like that he felt the well-suppressed panic start to rise up (how did he get here? How would he get home? Had it been an accident, or had there been a magician involved? Would he ever get home?).

“It’ll work out, Tim, don’t worry,” Dick said reassuringly from his perch on the desk. Tim glanced at him, taking in his calm face, his relaxed posture, and took a deep breath. It would be okay. Bruce was helping him get home, and Dick was always right about these sorts of things, it would all be okay.

“I know,” Tim said, managing to drag up a smile for his older brother. “But hey, guess what - I’ve actually got a good excuse for skipping school now! Hey, Ms. Horace, sorry I couldn’t do my homework, I was stuck in an alternate dimension -”

Dick laughed. “You haven’t done that daily diary assignment for English yet, have you? Just imagine: A Day in the Life of Timothy Drake.” He spread his hands across the air in the parody of a headline.

“Are you kidding?” Tim said, actually grinning now. “I think Bruce would actually ground me for life if I pulled a stunt like that.”

“Life? No,” Dick replied. “A month? Yeah, that’s about what happened when I wrote an essay on the pros and cons of being Robin. I think Bruce just about -” he cut off abruptly. Tim glanced up to see that the satisfied smirk had slid from his brother’s face, leaving a lost expression in its place.

It was like he had forgotten, for a moment, that he and Bruce weren’t getting along.

“Can I ask,” Tim said cautiously, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Why are you and Bruce fighting? I mean - you said it wasn’t because of me.”

“No, it’s not you,” Dick reassured him. He looked away for a second, gazing out the window at the city skyline with a slightly troubled look on his face. All of their previous levity was gone. “It’s ... complicated.”

Tim twisted the string of his hoodie between his fingers, and stayed silent.

“Robin was never supposed to be a mantle,” Dick said after a moment. “It was just - it was a way for me to do good, I guess. A way for me to grow up, and to make my parents proud. And then I moved on, and Bruce didn’t.”

“Batman needs a Robin,” Tim said, the words falling automatically from his lips.

“He doesn’t,” Dick said. “He was Batman on his own for a long time before he took me in.”

“So you’re fighting about Robin?”

“It was never supposed to be a mantle,” Dick repeated. “I just - I walked away, I was gone for a month, and then - there was Jason, stepping into my old shoes.” Dick’s voice took on a hollow quality, one that Tim didn’t like one bit. “He wanted to be just like me, he tried so hard, and then - then he died, and I thought that would be the end of it.”

It hadn’t been. Bruce had fallen apart, and Tim had decided that it was up to him to pull him back together again.

“Then you became Robin, and then - you died, and I thought he might finally get it.” Dick’s voice was rough now, and his gaze had turned into a glare, still fixed on some point past the window. “I thought maybe this time, maybe he’d finally understand that Robin wasn’t his - Robin shouldn’t be something a kid aspires to be, shouldn’t be a role taken up by children.”

“And then Damian became Robin,” Tim said.

“Yes,” Dick said. “And I won’t watch Batman lead his own son to ruin.”

Tim picked apart the knot he’d unconsciously tied with his fiddling, giving Dick a moment to gather himself. Then he said “You know what my favorite thing is about being Robin?”

Dick’s eyes shifted, focusing on Tim’s face. “What’s that?”

“It’s exciting,” Tim said. “You have no idea how bored I was before I became Robin.”

Dick smiled despite himself, some of the hollowness leaving his eyes. “Bored enough to stalk Batman and Robin through Gotham City in the dead of night?”

“Exactly,” Tim said, and grinned. He reached up to push his bangs out of his face, and caught sight of Dick’s escrima sticks on the desk by the TV. “Oh - were you going out?”

Dick’s gaze followed his. “I was thinking about it. Just some of my old patrol routes - you know there are rumors of an Arkham breakout, right?”

“Yeah,” Tim said. And then, before he could lose his nerve: “Can I come with you?”

“You want to patrol with me?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have any of your gear.”

“That’s okay,” Tim assured him. “I’m wearing dark clothes, and I have my taser, see? I won’t get in any fights, I promise.”

Dick gazed at him for a moment, looking torn.

“Pleeease?” Tim wheedled. “I promise I’ll be good, you won’t even know I’m there.”

And then Dick laughed, a real laugh that had his head tilting back, eyes sparkling as he regarded Tim in amusement. “Is that a threat, Drake?” he teased. “You’ll just follow me anyway, won’t you?”

Tim wouldn’t have, actually, but - “...yeah. So?”

“Fine,” Dick said, amused. “Let me get into my suit, and any sign of violence you disappear, yeah? You don’t stick around if things start to go sideways.”

It was fun patrolling with Nightwing. It was fun running as a shadow beneath a flying bird, letting the darkness keep him in a way he never could as Robin. Tim leapt, and Nightwing caught him, and they flew through the sky together.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if Batman made Damian Robin. Maybe Tim could be Nightwing’s Robin instead.

“Sorry,” Constantine said, shrugging. “Nothing I can do for you.”

Bruce stiffly thanked him, and Alfred showed him out of the room, leaving Tim and Bruce alone in Bruce’s study. Tim stared glumly at his notes, wishing they took up more than half a page.

After a moment, Bruce spoke. “You cannot remember anything noteworthy of that night - no chance encounters, no physical traces of magic?”

“No, nothing,” Tim said. Hefner Way, his notes said. Tripped on nothing, four (five?) bins, no one around. Stacks of cardboard, broken glass, old bicycle. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that had happened on patrol prior to his tripping had seemed even remotely out of place. It had been a routine patrol, a calm night. Nothing noteworthy about it.

“What if I can’t get back,” Tim asked abruptly, and his chin jerked up as he met Bruce’s gaze. “What if I’m stuck here?”

“I said that I would do everything in my power to get you back to your home,” Bruce said slowly, and Tim’s fingers tightened on his notebook. But what if that isn’t possible, Bruce should know that things didn’t always work out, that was why there were contingencies -

“But what if,” Tim insisted, not quite managing to maintain eye contact. “Things don’t always work out, Bruce, what if I - just tell me. Tell me what happens if I never go home.”

“Tim,” Bruce said sternly, gently. “Look at me, please.”

It was very hard for Tim to drag his eyes up to Bruce’s face.

“I said that I would get you home. Do you trust me?”

Of course Tim trusted Bruce. Bruce was Batman, Bruce had taught him how to fight, how to fly (how to live). He’d taught him how to do good, how to fight injustice and how to help the people who needed it most. He was more of a father to Tim than Jack Drake had ever been.

Do you trust me, Tim?

“Yes,” Tim said.

If he hadn’t been looking, he wouldn’t have seen it. He would have missed the way Bruce’s eyes fractured, guilt and grief poking through like shards of broken glass. Then he blinked and it was gone, replaced by a steady determination as Bruce nodded, and stood.

“Good,” he said. “You should get some rest. We’ll start again with fresh eyes in the morning.”

Tim hated metaphorical walls with a passion. They were time consuming and stress inducing and in his not-so-humble opinion they should never have been dreamt into existence. Some walls could be scaled. Most could be inspected and picked apart bit by bit, until they crumbled in the face of sheer determination. But this wall - the wall keeping Tim from going home - was by all appearances impassable, and showed no signs of going away. Tim was frustrated and homesick and on the tenth night of his stay in Universe Dead Tim, he decided to do something about it.

Tim decided that if he couldn’t fix his own messed up life, at least he could try to fix his family’s.

Step one: make a plan with a plan B and an extra added contingency. Step two: break an emotionally volatile crime lord out of Arkham Asylum.

The lights switched off abruptly, plunging the entire building into darkness. Tim held his breath, crammed into an air vent just down the hall from Jason's cell, and listened carefully.

Click.

The sound of locks disengaging was deafening in the dead silence which had descended when the lights switched off, and Tim winced despite himself. In theory, it was a good idea to automatically disengage the locks when the power shut off. If Arkham was burning to the ground, it would look pretty bad if the inmates perished inside because their doors wouldn’t open. In theory, Arkham had back-up generators just like all the hospitals, so that there wasn’t an Arkham break any time there was a summer storm.

In practice it was a bit more complicated. In practice, a summer storm usually meant a long night of work for Batman and Robin.

Luckily, Tim’s death didn’t seem to impact the predictable cycles of life in Gotham City. Just like in his own universe, there were stirrings of an imminent breakout, and Batman and Robin had been working tirelessly over the past week to get a step ahead of the operation. So Tim, with more time on his hands now that he wasn’t out every night on the streets, spent a few long nights at the Batcomputer and figured out when the breakout was going to happen.

And then proceeded to keep his mouth shut.

Arkham breakouts happened all the time, Tim reasoned, squirming around so that he could press an eye to the grate and keep track of which criminals were passing beneath him. Maybe Batman and Robin would be so busy corralling the escapees that they wouldn’t even notice that Tim was missing until he had a chance to get somewhere safe. They wouldn’t notice that Jason was missing until it was too late.

The Joker, who’d been in the cell farthest down the hall, passed beneath him with a swaggering, waltzing gait. Tim held his breath and counted to ten before carefully lifting the grate and dropping silently to the ground, darting over to Jason’s cell.

It was empty.

“Shit, Jason,” Tim hissed, hopping out to peer down the corridor again. He’d read the breakout reports of the past several months: Jason had managed to escape the first two times, only to be brought back a few days later with the others. The last three, though, he hadn’t - whether that was because of increased security or if Jason simply hadn’t bothered, Tim wasn’t sure. But he’d counted on Jason being in his cell for the breakout, and he’d been paying attention: Jason hadn’t passed under Tim’s hiding spot in the vents.

So where the hell was he?

Tim stood stupidly in the middle of the room for a solid two minutes before he became aware of the fact that someone was watching him. The feeling snuck up on him suddenly and he spun, but - there was no one there. No one in the door, no one in the hall, no one -

Blue-gray eyes peered up at him from under the bed, regarding him with flat disbelief that was bordering on incredulity.

“Jason!” Tim fell into a crouch, reaching forward to grab Jason’s wrist and tug him up from under the bed. “Come on, let’s go.”

“What the fuck?” was Jason’s response as he allowed himself to be hauled unceremoniously upwards. “Replacement, are you - you’re alive? Did you just copy me again?”

“If you want me to stop copying you, you need to stop making the same stupid mistakes,” Tim snapped. “Now let’s get out of here before they shut the place down.”

“I’m pretty sure you just insulted yourself,” Jason said faintly, but at least he was moving now - at least he ran lightly after Tim, the two of them becoming shadows in the night as they slipped past the dead alarms and the wide open gates.

Tim hated Arkham Asylum. But he knew his own loathing of the place had nothing on Jason’s fear.

They were down in an abandoned subway tunnel when Jason’s fingers closed around Tim’s wrist, forcing him to stop. “Replacement, stop -”

Tim twisted away automatically, one arm coming up in defense while the other slipped into his pocket to grip his taser. Jason let go, stepping back and raising his hands. “What’s going on,” he asked, eyes fixed on Tim’s face.

“I’m getting you out of Arkham,” Tim said, forcing himself to relax. “I’m helping you get away.”

“You’re alive.”

“I’m not,” Tim sighed. “I’m - Tim’s still dead, in this universe. I’m from another dimension, I came here by accident. But you’re my brother, and I couldn’t just leave without helping you out. You shouldn’t have to be in Arkham.”

“I killed you.” Jason said slowly, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. “You died.”

Okay, Tim thought, taking a deep breath. So they were doing this here. Why not? “Not in my universe,” he said. “You stopped before you killed me. And then you apologized” (well, not in quite so many words, but Tim had gotten the gist) “and now we’re friends. You didn’t have to kill me, so what happened?”

“What happened?” Jason demanded, his shoulders tensing. “What happened, Replacement, is that Batman fucking replaced me with the snobby rich neighbor kid!”

“No,” Tim snapped. “That’s not what happened. I never replaced you, and you didn’t have to kill me. What happened?”

Jason’s eyes flashed, and for a moment Tim wondered if he was truly going to attack him. Then he let out a snarled curse and raised a shaking hand to his face, turning away. For a moment they just stood there in the gloom, Tim tense as he watched Jason carefully pull himself back together.

“You fell,” Jason said at last, voice flat. “I came to teach you a lesson, to prove my point to Batman, and guess what - I did it. I showed Batman what I was capable of, and you - you couldn’t even be a good Robin, you had to go and die just like me -”

“I made it a year longer than you did,” Tim pointed out, annoyed. “So I couldn’t have done too poorly. And what do you mean I fell?”

Bashed in head, shattered spine. A broken stair rail. Tim didn’t remember falling, and it would make sense if that was what had killed him.

Jason’s face twisted. “I -”

He cut off abruptly as he stumbled backwards, back hitting the rough stone wall and hand reaching up to grip the small dagger embedded in his shoulder. He and Tim both stared at it in confusion, and at the dark red blood slowly blooming between his fingers.

“Shit,” Jason hissed, eyes snapping up to focus on something behind Tim, and Tim whirled to see a small hooded figure drop from the low ceiling, barely visible in the looming darkness. Then Robin stepped forward, cloak twisting with the shadows as he shifted, and the edge of his sword glinting as he lifted it in the air before him.

Chapter Text

“Get away from him!” Damian snarled, masked eyes glinting dangerously beneath his hood. He shifted, sword lifting from his side, and Tim took a hasty step forward.

It had been a while since he’d dealt with a volatile Damian. When Damian had first shown up on Bruce’s doorstep, fresh from the League of Assassins with a scowl on his face, he had made almost daily attempts to assassinate Tim; these Tim could deal with. It was the subsequent meltdowns when his attempts inevitably failed that Tim had always been hasty to push off onto Bruce or Dick.

“Robin, wait,” Tim tried, because Bruce wasn’t here and neither was Dick. “Let me just -”

“How long,” Jason interrupted behind him, voice tight with pain. “How long until the Big Bat shows up?”

Actually. Good question.

“I don’t need Batman to put you in the ground,” Damian scoffed. “Drake, step away -“

“No,” Tim said. “How did you find us?” How long until Batman finds us?

Damian tore his gaze away from Jason to give Tim a withering look. “You are even more of an idiot than the original Drake if you think I’m going to reveal my secrets to you.”

Well, okay, fine, but -

“Batman’s not coming,” Damian continued fiercely, turning back to Jason. “This is between me and the Red Hood.”

Tim had always figured that the reason Damian’s many (many) assassination attempts failed was that he underestimated Tim. He saw him as weak, a poor substitute for the real thing. It was only now, looking at the young boy wrapped in darkness, that Tim wondered if perhaps he too had underestimated Damian. If he had perhaps taken too lightly the fact that Damian was a League trained assassin.

Damian wasn’t just dangerous. Damian was deadly.

Jason pushed himself off the wall, standing rather unsteadily on his feet as his hand fell from his shoulder. It was still bleeding copiously, deep red pulsing into the white of his uniform, and Tim realized that the blade must have nicked an artery. Jason must have realized that too, because he didn’t try to dislodge the blade.

“This isn’t the Red Hood,” Tim tried, a little desperately. He shifted his stance a bit, ready to spring into action if (when) Damian decided to attack. “If you just let Jason explain -”

“You died!” Damian shouted, fury crackling across his face like lightning. “I saw you, you were dead - Red Hood killed you, then left you on Father’s doorstep as a gift!”

And you were the one who found me, Tim thought, feeling slightly ill. Maybe Alfred had been sleeping, maybe he had been taking the morning off, or maybe Damian had simply reached the door first. Whatever the reason, it was Damian who had discovered his broken body on the manor steps, and it was Damian who’d had to tell Batman that Robin was dead.

“It wasn’t supposed to be you,” Jason said, his voice strained. “I didn’t know you were there - it was supposed to be Batman who found him.”

“You’re a murderer,” Damian snarled, and Tim’s arm snapped out just in time to catch his cape as the younger boy launched himself forward.

“Damian, wait!” he shouted, even as Damian turned on him. He dodged the birdarang that went spinning past his shoulder, and gave the kid a flat look. “Just - hold on a minute, okay? Jason shouldn’t have left me for you to find, but I don’t think he actually meant for me to die.”

“He killed you!”

“I don’t think he did!” Tim cried. He knew it was irrational - he knew there was no evidence, it was just - he was alive, and Jason hadn’t killed him. So he grit his teeth and kept his grip on the boy twisting in his arms, trying to get away. “Damian, come on, please! How about you come with us, okay? Just - Christ, stop -”

In the corner of his eye, Tim noted that Jason had stumbled back to steady himself against the wall again, looking increasingly pale. Then Damian’s fist shot out of nowhere straight into Tim’s sternum and he coughed, and then Damian twisted again, finally slithering out of Tim’s desperate grip. He turned and launched himself at Jason, knees up and sword raised.

No!

Damian landed and Jason dropped, and Tim leapt forward, ignoring the pain flaring in his chest at the movement. He wasn’t going to let Damian kill Jason, not when he was so close -

Jason twisted, previous lethargy gone in the blink of an eye, and between one moment and the next he had Damian pinned to the wall, sword knocked from the younger boy’s grasp as he struggled to push against the arm Jason had pinned to his throat.

Tim’s heart jumped to his throat, and suddenly he was moving forward for an entirely different reason. For a brief moment it was as though he was back in the Tower, only it wasn’t him Jason had pinned to the wall - it wasn’t Tim’s Robin, it was a smaller, younger boy - it was his little brother - “Jason! Let go, you’re choking him!”

“Kind of the idea,” Jason bit out, his free hand blocking a blow to his side as Damian’s struggles began to slip from aggressive to panicked. “Fucking Rob - fucking League assassins.”

“Stop -”

Jason grunted as one of Damian’s hits landed. “Did you break me out of that hell hole with the express purpose of letting this little demon murder me? No? Then shut up and just wait a goddamn second, I’m not going to kill him.”

Damian’s struggles slowed, his movements becoming more jerky and farther apart, and Tim thought he might throw up. Finally the boy stopped moving, his limbs falling limp as his eyes rolled back in his head, and Jason breathed out a curse, shifting to lower them both to the ground.

Tim stepped forward, kneeling wordlessly beside them as he reached for Robin’s belt, rummaging through the pouches until he found the medical supplies. Damian’s breathing was shallow and raspy, the air whistling in and out of his chest a sharp contrast to Jason’s rapid breaths as the older boy leaned back, gripping the blade in his shoulder and blinking at the ceiling. His white shirt was now well and truly covered in blood, and as he passed Jason a roll of gauze Tim tried to steady his own breathing, tried to bridge the gap between his two brothers.

“Ready?” Tim asked quietly, helping Jason hold the gauze against the blade. Jason nodded, and Tim quickly pulled the knife from his shoulder, pressing immediately against the wound as he fumbled for the linen strips and started securing the bandages.

“He’ll be out for another ten minutes, maybe,” Jason said after a moment, wincing as Tim twisted the bandage tight. “Do you have a plan?”

Tim’s plan had been to sneak Jason down to the docks and then onto the first ship with destination: Anywhere But Gotham. He knew it was unrealistic to expect his family to forgive Jason just because Tim told them to: his goal had been primarily to get Jason out of Arkham and away from the Joker.

That plan was somewhat complicated by the stab wound and the unconscious Robin. Thankfully, Tim was rather good at coming up with new plans on the fly.

“There’s a Hilton on the edge of town,” he said after a moment. “We’ll regroup there, and figure out what to do next.”

The expression on Dick’s face when he opened the door to a stressed Tim, a bloody Jason, and an unconscious Damian was nothing short of gobsmacked. Tim pushed forward before he could properly get his thoughts together and slam the door in their faces.

“Damian will wake up in about half an hour, we had to tranq him,” he said quickly, lowering Damian onto the second bed. “Jason needs stitches, I think he’s lost a fair amount of blood.”

Jason was still standing tense and pale in the doorway, so Tim stepped forward to tug him in, pushing him into the big black office chair by the desk. He looked up at Dick, who was still watching from the doorway. “Dick? Where’s your medkit?”

Dick didn’t move. “Why is he here?” he rasped, a scarily blank expression sliding onto his face.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Jason said defensively, immediately tensing. Tim hopped sideways, placing himself between Jason and Dick and wondering if he had possibly miscalculated.

“I don’t think he killed me,” he said hastily, and Dick’s eyes snapped to him. “Not on purpose, at least. Just trust me, okay? And -” Tim took a big breath, and crossed his fingers behind his back - “if you still don’t believe us after he’s explained, you can send him back to Arkham.”

Dick raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t call Tim’s bluff (which somehow didn’t make Tim feel any better). Instead he stepped forward, lifting Damian’s limp wrist between his fingers, head tilted slightly in consideration. After a moment he let the boy’s arm fall again, and turned to kneel before his suitcase. “How long until Bruce shows up?”

Tim released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “I think Robin disabled his trackers before he left. He wanted to face Jason alone.”

Dick sighed. “Typical,” he muttered, straightening with his travel medkit and turning to Jason. His face was still expressionless, his movements stilted, but at least he wasn’t attacking them (right? That was a good thing, right?).“Let’s see it.”

The room descended into a tense silence as Dick worked, neatly stitching up the wound and reapplying the bandages. Jason was trembling by the time he was done, breathing heavily as he stared at the floor and refused to make a sound. Dick leaned back when he was done, not moving, and when he finally stood to wash his hands Tim caught a flash of - something - on his face before he walked into the bathroom. When he returned, his face was as impassive as ever.

“Okay,” Dick said, stopping at the foot of Damian’s bed. “Tim. What is going on?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Tim said immediately. He’d been thinking about this: about the photos he’d found, the crime scene report, Jason’s own (brief) words on the matter. He’d taken the pieces he’d been given - shattered spine, collapsed stair railing, “you fell ” - and he’d formed a tentative story of what had happened in this universe, how he’d died. And he’d been reciting in his head the entire way to the hotel what he would say that would convince Dick of Jason’s innocence. “He didn’t actually want to kill me -”

“So you’re saying that if Red Hood never went to Titans Tower, you would have died anyway?” Dick interrupted. Jason pulled at his blood-soaked shirt, eyes flicking from Dick to Tim and saying nothing.

“Well, no,” Tim said. “But something went wrong, Jason said I fell, and - and it was never about killing me, that wasn’t the point.”

He had asked Jason, in his own universe, why he had been so angry. Why he had attacked Tim, what had changed when he first offered Tim a hand off the alley floor. You replaced me, Jason had answered, arching an eyebrow and avoiding Tim’s gaze. What was I supposed to do? Tim hadn’t believed him. He wasn’t stupid, and he knew that there was more to it than that, but then Jason had continued, and his answer to Tim’s second question had successfully distracted him from the non-answer to his first.

The Lazarus Pit makes you angry, Tim, Jason had said. You have no idea what it feels like.

And Tim had then proceeded to dive headfirst into researching anything and everything Lazarus Pit related.

“Talia put him in the Lazarus Pit,” Tim said now, trying to explain. Jason tensed at Tim’s words, his gaze snapping to Tim’s face even as Dick frowned. “It wasn’t his fault, it messed with his mind, it’s really hard to control -”

“It wasn’t the Pit,” Jason interrupted, the first time he’d spoken since Tim shoved him into the chair and Dick started dressing his wound. “The Pit never made me do anything, Replacement.”

Tim turned to glare at him. “Are you going to start being helpful here, or do you want Dick to send you back to Arkham?”

“Just get your facts straight,” Jason muttered, and sent a half-hearted glare at Dick. It might have landed harder, had he not looked so miserable.

“Okay, fine, maybe it wasn’t entirely the Pit -”

“Tim,” Dick said, and Tim was starting to get a little tired of being interrupted. “Stop. Just - what, exactly, was your plan? You think Ja- you think the Red Hood is innocent. What exactly were you going to do once you broke him out?”

Jason turned to him as well, and Tim bristled at the silent good question evident in his slightly judgmental gaze. “Get you away,” Tim said, deciding to address Jason. “I was going to take you to the docks, I stashed a bag with clothes and food and a phone. I wanted to get you away from Gotham, away from the Joker. And then - then I was going to get you to tell me what happened.” And this was the crux of his plan, this was the keystone upon which Tim’s entire plan (his entire family) rested. But he spoke, and Dick and Jason stared at him, and - “I was going to explain everything to Bruce, and he would see that it wasn’t your fault, and then, when you were ready, you could finally come home.”

- it sounded so childish, when he said it out loud. It sounded like a fairy tale, too good to be true.

(It sounded like the stories he used to read himself at night, seven years old, waiting for his parents to come home.)

“Hah,” Jason said abruptly, voice bitter. “As if. The old man has never listened to anyone but himself.”

Dick was still, watching Jason with a strange expression on his face. “God,” he whispered at last, and took two quick steps to the empty bed near the window, sitting on the tangled sheets and dipping his face into his hands. He sighed, then lifted his gaze to Jason.

“You died,” he said, eyes red, and Tim’s fingers curled into the firm mattress beneath him. “You died, Jason, god, and - and then you killed Tim - is he telling the truth?” Dick’s voice was almost pleading now, almost hopeful, and Tim held his breath. “Was it an accident? What happened?”

Tim was holding his breath, but Jason wasn’t. The bitterness coloring his tone had turned to rage on his face, and when he spoke his eyes flashed with anger. “The Joker fucking killed me, that’s what happened! You think it changes anything, that I came back? You think that just because my grave is empty that none of it matters? I’m not Robin anymore, and thanks to Bruce and that goddamn Joker I never will be! I’m not the boy who died, and I’m sick and tired of you and Bruce expecting me to be someone I’m not.”

“Jason,” Dick said, his voice barely above a whisper but steady nonetheless. “Was Tim’s death an accident?”

Jason stared at Dick, eyes wide, and then his face twisted and for an instant (just for an instant) Tim thought he was going to say No. Then he turned abruptly away, face falling into an expression of misery as his eyes snapped shut, hand rising to hide his tears too late. "You never fucking listen," he whispered, voice broken.

Tim had never seen Jason like this. He’d never seen Dick like this, or Damian, and he hated it.

“Why won’t you just say it?” Tim said, unable to tear his eyes from the tears sliding down Jason’s wrist. It wasn’t true, he knew it wasn’t true, why wouldn’t Jason just say it? “Just say you didn’t kill me!”

The world held still, balanced on a fulcrum with a razor-sharp edge.

“I didn’t kill you,” Jason said at last, voice hollow. He let his arm fall, and Tim followed his gaze to the blood-stained fingers resting in his lap.

“You don’t believe that,” Tim said numbly, lifting his eyes to Jason’s pinched face, eyes haunted in a way they’d never been in Tim’s universe. “You - you think -”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Jason said harshly. “Not to you or the Golden Boy, not to Bruce. What I believe has never mattered, I never mattered to any of you. Get it through your head, Replacement - you don’t matter to him, all he ever wanted was Robin.”

“That’s not true!” Tim cried. He turned Dick, who was holding himself frighteningly still on the bed. “That’s not true, you matter, we all matter -”

“Then what the fuck are we all doing here?”

Dick’s head snapped up and between one moment and the next he was on his feet, jumping at Tim - and past him, hand out to restrain the twelve-year-old assassin who Tim, at least, had completely forgotten about.

“Perfect,” Jason muttered wearily, as Tim spun to confront this new (unwelcome, very unwelcome) distraction.

“Let me go,” Damian spat, pushing up and trying his utmost to break free of Dick’s relentless grip. “Let me go, the Red Hood doesn’t belong here he drugged me -”

“Calm down,” Dick said, shifting his grip as Damian tried and failed to twist away. “Relax, Damian, you’re fine -”

“I never drugged you,” Jason protested, having regained some of his composure in the face of this new threat. “and you fucking stabbed me -”

Damian’s eyes latched onto Tim’s, twin sparks of wild green meeting his gaze for the briefest of seconds. Then his gaze snapped closed and he let out a wordless snarl, breaking free to launch himself across the room before Dick could stop him. Tim stood frozen to the spot as Damian’s fingers latched around Jason’s throat and they both went toppling to the ground, the desk chair crashing beneath them as Jason let out a choked cry and swung at the younger boy, punches not quite landing as Dick leapt to pull them apart.

He’d never been particularly close with Damian. The kid tried almost weekly to kill him, after all, and had always made perfectly clear that he despised Tim. But - what if he’d been wrong? What if Damian wasn’t a psychopath, what if he didn’t mean all the hateful things he said, what if he just - what if he did care?

(What if he was just like Tim?)

 Maybe he’d been wrong, Tim thought, watching as Dick wrestled Damian away from Jason. Maybe Damian had never underestimated him, maybe that wasn’t the reason his numerous murder attempts had always failed. Damian was Bruce’s son, after all - Damian was Robin.

“No!” Damian shouted, writhing out of Dick’s grip and pushing himself away. He stood trembling in the middle of the room, eyes darting between the three of them as betrayal and desperation struggled for purchase on his face. “No, you don’t get to say anything to me, you left!”

“Fuck,” Jason wheezed, reaching up to grip his throat as Dick took a half step forward, hands half raised. “Damian -”

“You left,” Damian hissed, hatred winning out as his gaze snapped to Dick. Even Jason fell silent at the raw emotion seeping out of the younger boy’s voice. “Drake died and you left, and I had to pick up the pieces all by myself!”

Dick stared at Damian, face pale and lips pressed into a thin line. Jason turned away, lifting a shaking hand to cover his face, and Tim wondered if this was what people meant, when they warned him not to get in over his head. If perhaps he had leapt into the sea, taking his brothers with him, only to realize that they were too far from land to swim.

Chapter Text

The most confusing part for Tim was that in his entire stay in this universe, Damian had not once tried to kill him. Sure, he’d threatened him, and glared at him, and one couldn’t forget the birdarang he’d thrown in the subway, but none of it had been lethal. None of that was anything compared to how Damian kept trying to murder Jason, and Tim couldn’t figure it out.

Damian had never cared for him, he knew that. Why would the brat be upset by his death?

“Just stop trying to stab Jason,” Dick said tiredly. “He isn’t attacking you right now, and he’s not going anywhere either.”

Jason bristled at that, having pulled himself up to standing. “I’d like see you stop me -”

Dick turned on him, and Tim couldn’t suppress a wince at his expression. “I’d like to see you try.”

Jason scowled, but when he said nothing in response Dick turned back to Damian. For a moment Tim was convinced he was about to scold the younger boy - tell him to turn over his knives or something. Then his brow furrowed and he sighed, the look in his eyes turning almost helpless.

Damian stood stock still in the middle of the room, glaring at him.

“I’m sorry,” Dick said at last, and when his gaze flicked up to meet Tim’s, Tim found himself rooted to the spot. “I shouldn’t have left, after Tim died. It was selfish of me, and I made a mistake.”

Come back, Tim had told Dick, all those years ago. And Dick has answered No.

Had Dick ever apologized to Tim? (Did Tim think he needed to?)

Damian glared, breathing hard, but he didn’t move to attack anyone and after a moment Dick sighed, and pulled his phone from his pocket. Tim tensed immediately. “What are you doing?”

“Calling Bruce,” Dick said. Damian stiffened at that, Jason paled even further, and Tim leapt forward, completely failing to snatch the phone from Dick’s hands.

“No, Dick, you can’t! He’ll put Jason back in Arkham, you can’t -”

“I made a mistake,” Dick repeated, phone held to his ear as he twisted out of Tim’s reach and somehow managed to knock him onto the bed. “I’m not making the same mistake again. Batman? Yeah, it’s me. Robin, Red Hood and T are all here with me at the Hilton on Franklin. Get over here now.” He hung up, and turned to Jason. “You have five minutes to get your story straight.”

Tim pushed himself and eyed the window, and wondered how feasible it would be to get Jason away before Batman showed up.

“He’s not going to listen to me,” Jason bit out, looking like he was trying very hard not to panic. “He’ll kill me!”

“I will kill you first -” Damian started, having gotten over his surprise, but Dick cut him off with a glower at Jason. “That’s a bit rich coming from you, Red Hood.”

Jason’s breath hitched, and his gaze darted to Tim. Tim frowned. “Jason,” he said slowly. “Why do you think Bruce is going to kill you?”

“Because he tried to do it before,” Jason snapped, twitching a small step back towards the window. “Or didn’t he ever tell you that? He’s a hypocrite and a fucking liar, and when I told him to kill the Joker he fucking slit my neck open.”

What? When? What?

“What?” Dick asked.

“He chose the Joker over me,” Jason said shortly. “He’s not going to listen to a word I have to say.”

Again. What?

“That is a lie!” Damian exclaimed. He looked outraged, and through his shock it occurred to Tim that this was the exact same face Damian had made when Tim suggested Bruce was secretly a vampire. “Father doesn’t kill!”

“Fuck you, what do you know?” Jason spat.

Tim wasn’t sure what Jason was talking about, or when this had happened (it must have happened after his death, that was the divergence point between his reality and this one), but one thing he knew for sure: “He never chose the Joker over you, Jason.”

“Again: fuck you, you weren’t even there -”

“I was, actually,” Tim interrupted, because he had been (or, close enough: he’d hacked the cameras on the Batmobile). “He tried to kill the Joker.” The room fell silent, and Tim wondered why this was so hard to believe: why both Damian and Jason were now staring at him with various expressions of disbelief. “After you died, he was going to do it. Superman stopped him.”

“When was this?” Dick asked.

“Right when he came back, after the funeral. He shot the Joker’s helicopter down over the UN.”

“No, Jason - when did Bruce slit your throat?”

Dick was staring at Jason, looking like he was seeing him for the first time - like until this moment, it hadn’t been Jason but rather the Red Hood standing in the hotel room. But Jason wasn’t paying attention to Dick anymore - he was staring at Tim, eyes flickering with suspicion and betrayal and a strange spark of desperation. And Damian was watching all three of them, eyes narrowed as they darted between them, and Tim was just trying to understand, trying to wrap his mind around how this world could be so fundamentally different (and yet just the same, how was that possible) from his own world.

And that was how Bruce found them, when he slipped in through the window through which Tim had been contemplating escape.

The second the window cracked open, the room burst into motion. Jason leapt backwards, back against the wall and uninjured arm reaching for the nearest throw-able object: the TV remote on the desk. Damian tensed, looking like he was about to launch himself at Jason all over again now that Batman was here, and Tim jumped between them, trying to stand between Jason and Damian while at the same time keeping an eye on Batman, who had straightened and was now staring at them all through his cowl.

Because yes, Tim knew that look (they all knew that look). They were all in Trouble.

“Robin,” Bruce said, his gaze finally settling on Damian. “Report.”

Damian straightened. “The impostor broke the Red Hood out of Arkham,” he said promptly. “I apprehended them, but they got the upper hand and I awoke here, with Grayson. I am sorry. It will not happen again.” His gaze narrowed, darting over to Jason.

“Are you all right?”

Damian faltered. “I am fine, Father,” he said after a moment. “I was briefly incapacitated, but am now fully recovered and fit for duty.”

Bruce nodded, and his gaze turned next to Dick, lingering on him for a moment before he turned to Tim. Tim straightened, and found himself wishing that he was wearing his mask. “Timothy. Report.”

Tim swallowed. “It was an accident,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time that night. Jason was holding himself still behind him, whether in anger or fear Tim didn’t know anymore. And - and suddenly Tim was terrified. Bruce didn’t listen, Jason was right, because shouldn’t this be obvious? Why couldn’t they see it, why couldn’t Jason just say it - “Jason didn’t mean to kill me. I had to get him out of Arkham, B, that’s - you can’t just do that. Joker was in there.”

And finally Bruce’s eyes lifted, going past Tim to Jason behind him. “The Red Hood killed my son.”

This wasn’t okay. Tim was done trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t, and he was sick and tired of trying to keep together this family that was doing its damnedest to tear itself apart.

“The Red Hood is your son!” Tim exploded. “He matters just as much as me, he matters more than me because no, Bruce, I wasn’t your son! You never got the chance to adopt me here, but you did Jason, and he’s back, he’s alive, and - and - and why am I the only one who fucking cares?”

“Tim -”

“No, Dick, he’s your brother, you were supposed to be there -”

Bruce’s face was still hard, his emotional mask still impenetrable beneath the black cowl, and Tim thought he might be sick. This couldn’t happen, he wouldn’t let it, and he opened his mouth to say so, but Damian beat him to it.

“The impostor is right.”

Tim stared at the young boy, wondering if he’d misheard

Damian’s gaze met his for a second before he straightened, and turned determinedly to face Bruce. “Father, I propose we retire to the cave, and hear the Red Hood out. Once he has said his piece, we can deliver the justice he deserves.”

“I’m not going back,” Jason said suddenly. “Whatever you do, I’m not going back to Arkham.”

“I don’t think that’s up to you,” Bruce said quietly.

The room fell into a heavy silence, broken only by Tim’s heart thrumming in his ears. Dick was standing tense, coiled as though to spring; Damian was watching his father carefully, ready for his command, and Bruce: Bruce was staring at Tim and, behind him, at Jason.

Ghosts, Tim thought suddenly. He looks at us and sees ghosts.

Would Bruce listen to the dead?

“You’re hurt,” Bruce said at last, eyes falling to Jason’s bandaged shoulder and blood-stained uniform. He turned then, and met Dick’s wary gaze. “Will you meet us at the cave?”

“I’ll come with you,” Dick said, and Bruce nodded.

“Let’s go.”

It took fifteen minutes to reach the cave. Dick led Jason to the medbay while Damian disappeared briefly near the lockers. Bruce removed his cowl, and steered Tim firmly toward the stairs.

“It would be best if you waited upstairs,” Bruce said, ignoring Tim’s protests. “I will inform you once we have reached a decision.”

Which was how Tim found himself slumped on the kitchen island at 2am, watching Alfred prepare the dough for a fresh batch of cinnamon rolls.

“Alfred,” Tim groaned, turning to let his forehead rest on the cool marble counter. “What is going on? What am I even doing?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to need a little more context, Master Tim,” Alfred said gently.

Tim tucked his elbow under his ear, and watched Alfred’s shoulders move methodically as he kneaded the dough. “I guess I just - why am I here? Why are these world’s so different? Why is everything always so complicated?”

“That’s life, I’m afraid. There is not a simple formula for these things, and sometimes the best we can do has to be good enough.”

“I just - I don’t understand.”

Alfred didn’t answer, and Tim spent maybe five minutes trying to figure out what he was trying to say. He just wanted answers to all of his questions: Why had Jason tried to kill him? What had happened in the tower here that was so different, and how had things spiraled so completely out of control from that one unknown moment? When and why had Bruce hurt Jason? How could Bruce possibly look at Jason and see - a murderer, okay, fine, he was, but - a monster? Why?

Tim lifted his head to look properly at Alfred, and tried to make his words work. “Alfred. Why can’t Bruce just forgive him? Jason is his son, and I’m - I’m just the neighbor kid, you know? I mean, obviously I’m touched, but - I’m not Jason. God, it’s not like I’m Damian.”

“Master Tim,” Alfred said firmly, flipping the dough onto the well-floured counter and turning to face him. “Regardless of what Master Damian has told you, regardless of what you yourself may think: you were not a placeholder, nor were you ever a replacement. Bruce may not have officially adopted you, but that does not mean he did not love you deeply. Your death was a terrible thing, and you are missed in this house every single day.”

“But - but that’s not the point. Why can’t he love Jason, too?”

“Master Bruce is an interesting man,” Alfred said softly, his tone oddly serious. “Some think that he is shallow, callous - in his line of work, that is all too common. But he is one of the most caring men I have ever known. Ever since he was a child, he has deeply loved every person who has had the privilege to enter his life. Until last year, even the countless tragedies of his life had not managed to curb his capacity for love. But your death, on top of so many others -”

Alfred broke off, then cleared his throat and continued. “He does love Jason, lad. He loves him just as much as he ever loved you, and he is trying to reconcile that love for his son with his hatred for the man responsible for his child’s death. I am sure you can understand that it is not an easy thing to do.”

“What about you?” Tim asked. “Do you hate him, then?”

“As I said, Master Tim, this life of ours is complicated. And there is nothing more complicated than love.”

It was nearly three in the morning when there were footsteps in the hall, and Dick appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Jason hung behind him, hesitating in the doorway as his eyes locked onto Alfred.

“Master Jason,” Alfred said, and despite everything his voice trembled. “- you’ve grown.”

“Yeah,” Jason whispered, still standing frozen in the doorway. He swallowed. “Um -”

“Come here, my boy.”

Tim looked away as Alfred pulled Jason into a hug, his gaze going up to meet Dick’s. “How’d it go?”

“Jason’s spending the night here,” Dick replied quietly. “Or, what’s left of it, I suppose. Alfred -?”

“If you boys would be so kind,” Alfred said, stepping back but keeping a hand firmly on Jason’s arm. “I would like a word with young Master Jason alone.”

“We’ll be in the parlor,” Dick said, as Tim stood. “Come find us when you’re done.”

Dick led the way to the parlor adjacent to the kitchen, flicking on the lights and settling onto the chaise near the empty fireplace.

“What did you decide?” Tim asked, perching on the chair across from him and trying not to let on how nervous he was.

“Jason’s staying the night,” Dick repeated. His face was resting in his hand, eyes closed in exhaustion. “He’s not going back to Arkham - don’t worry about that. You were right. He never meant to - kill Tim.” Tim shifted, and opened his mouth, but Dick took a shuddering breath and pressed on before he could. “I’m staying for a while, too. Just until things get settled, until we can figure out where Jason’s going to go. He’s not going back to prison, but - I think he agrees that he can’t stay here. Not now.”

That was fair, Tim supposed. “In my universe, he has a place in Crime Alley. He works out of there to help fight crime, and it’s actually really helped.”

“No,” Dick said without looking up. “The Red Hood is done.”

“What about my place, then?” Tim asked after a moment. “No one’s there now, he could live in Drake Manor. It’s close enough that he can visit, but if you get into a fight he’s easy enough to ignore.”

“You want him to live in your house,” Dick said, his voice muffled.

Tim shrugged. “Sure. I’m not going to be there, anyway.” At least, he hoped not. It had already been almost two weeks, he couldn’t possibly be here too much longer. “And it never really felt like home, anyway. Not when my parents were away - not after I moved in here.”

“Maybe,” Dick said after a moment. “Maybe, we’ll - we’ll see.”

Tim stood, and walked over to join Dick on the chaise, leaning against him before reaching up to wrap an arm around his shoulder. “Thanks, Dick,” he said, and Dick let out a weak laugh.

“Anything for you, kiddo.”

That was how Alfred found them, ten minutes later. Tim looked up to see that his eyes were red, despite his firm face; Jason stood behind him, looking absolutely wrecked and refusing to meet Tim’s gaze.

“Alfred? Is everything okay?”

“Everything is as well as it can be, Master Tim,” Alfred said. “Now how about some sleep? It’s been an exhausting night, and I am sure that everyone will feel much better after some well deserved rest.”

Tim and Dick and Jason all walked up the long stairs and down the hall of the bedroom suite. Dick broke off first to his childhood bedroom, and then Tim to his. Jason passed his old room with barely a glance, and followed Alfred to one of the guest rooms at the far end of the hall.

Things settled, a bit. Jason ended up spending two nights at the manor before Tim and Bruce took him to Drake Manor, and he reluctantly promised to give it a try. Bruce started working again on getting Tim home, this time with Dick helping, and Tim split his time between making sure Jason was settling in and helping them himself.

There were voices rising from the cave as Tim descended the stairs on the twentieth day of his stay in the alternate dimension. Dick’s voice was clear, not quite shouting but getting there; Bruce’s was low, guarded.

“... don’t even know if this will work. This isn’t science!”

“No, it’s not. But based on what Tim’s told us, and from what the simulations display, this is the closest we’ve come to what actually happened.”

“No. I won’t let you do this. You cannot send Tim through the multiverse on a whim, Bruce, that’s not - do you have any idea how dangerous this is?”

Tim froze on the second balcony, fingers curling around the thin metal rail. He’d just been coming to see if there’d been any progress, and to maybe bring them up for lunch. But it sounded like - had they found something? Had Bruce found a way to get Tim home?

“Dick -”

“No. I said no, Bruce.”

Tim leapt down the remaining flight of stairs, finally letting his feet make a sound as they hit the smooth stone floor. Bruce looked up from where he was sitting at the Batcomputer, and Dick turned as well - his face fell when he saw Tim, and he turned to glare viciously at Bruce.

“Did you find something?” Tim asked, quickly crossing the space between them.

“There was a physical anomaly, on the night you arrived,” Bruce said, ignoring Dick as he gestured at the display. “We didn’t see it, because it wasn’t in your room - it was in the alley you were in in your home dimension. I’ve analyzed the physical and atmospheric traces, and I believe I can replicate it here.”

“We don’t know it’ll work,” Dick said sharply.

“But,” Tim said, and he couldn’t help the small smile that crept onto his face. “It might.”

It didn’t work. They spent two days trying to recreate the anomaly, and Tim even “accidentally” tripped and hit his head a few times to try and recreate the experience, but nothing happened. All Tim got for his efforts was a headache and a bucket load of frustration, so when Bruce called a break he stomped off to the training mats looking for a distraction.

Damian was there, running through drills with his katana. Tim stood and watched him for a while, until the surging irritation and anxiety within him finally stilled, subsiding into the background to be brought up another day.

“Damian,” Tim said at last, when he could speak without snapping. He hadn’t really spoken with Damian since they brought Jason home - they’d both seemed to be unconsciously avoiding each other. “Why did you agree with me, back in the hotel?”

No had told him what was discussed in the cave after he left. He’d tried indirectly to get it out of first Jason, then Dick, but when neither of them had been forthcoming he had grudgingly accepted that, as this wasn’t his universe, it probably wasn’t any of his business. None of that would have happened, though, if Damian hadn’t stepped up in the first place.

Damian swept his sword up and around, spinning on the mat with deadly grace. “Because your assessment was correct,” he said, without pausing in his motions. “For some unfathomable reason, family matters to my father. In order for his performance as Batman to be optimal, it was necessary to resolve the issue.”

In other words: Damian cared about Bruce. And he cared about the things that his father cared about.

“Thanks, brat,” Tim said, as Damian bent into his final form.

“Tt. I didn’t do it for you.”

On day twenty-three, Jason hinted that he wanted to know where Tim was buried, so Tim led him down the path through the woods to the Drake family plot.

“So you weren’t buried in the family plot, either,” was Jason’s observation.

Tim sighed, stepping lightly across a tree root winding across the narrow path. “It’s not like that, Jason. He did it to protect our identities.”

“Yeah, well. At least you weren’t buried with the woman who fucking betrayed you.”

The wind picked up slightly as they reached the small plot, and Tim shoved his fists farther into his jacket as Jason stood silent, studying the inscription on the stone and the wilted flowers on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said abruptly. “I don’t think I said that. I was just so angry -” he cut off, and Tim hunched his shoulders. It almost didn’t feel right - it wasn’t him that Jason was talking to, not really.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” Jason muttered, kicking at a clump of grass. “I just - I wish it did, you know? I just wish - but it doesn’t matter, anyway.”

Tim didn’t say anything, and after a moment Jason let out a huff of breath. “Fine,” he grumbled, shooting a half-hearted glare at Tim. Tim returned his gaze, startled. “Is there - do you think there’s anything I can do?”

To make up for his death? Tim didn’t really think so. It wasn’t like the boy buried beneath them really cared, now - he was dead. But Jason was still watching him out of the corner of his eyes, so Tim tried to imagine what he would want.

His gaze drifted to the wilted flowers on the ground.

“He liked daffodils,” he offered.

Jason knelt in the cold grass, running his fingers lightly through the hard-packed Earth. “It’s not too late to plant bulbs,” he said after a moment. “Do you think daffodils would grow here?”

Tim blinked, then smiled. “I’m not sure. I bet Alfred would know, though.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, letting out a puff of breath. He stood, brushing the dirt from his knees. “Yeah, I bet he would.”

Tim wasn’t sure how long Jason wanted to be there. He was content to stand, though, to think of his parents and ancestors buried beneath his feet - and of himself, their last descendant. The Drake line had ended with him, and Tim ... didn’t mind, actually. His whole family was here, laid to rest beneath his feet, their lives begun and ended neatly, everything wrapped up nice and neat. It was almost comforting, he decided with a smile.

“You fell,” Jason said abruptly, breaking the silence. “You were trying to get away. And I guess the banister wasn’t as strong as you thought it was.”

Tim stared at the headstone in front of him, and tried to pull up the memories he’d long since decided to bury in favor of making up with his brother. Some things from that night he remembered in bright flashes, the staff and the suit and statues seared into his mind’s eye. Other parts, though, were just a blur - pain and movement and terror all blending into a rushing river of resentment better left untouched. “I was probably trying to get to Kon’s room,” Tim finally said, reluctantly.

“Did you think you were going to die?”

Had Tim thought the Red Hood would kill him, when he ambushed him in the tower? Yes, without hesitation. Had he thought Jason would kill him, when he sneered over him with the ripped, blood-spattered R in his hands?

“...yeah,” Tim whispered, and realized that it was true.

Jason shifted slightly away, and Tim glanced at him. “I tried, you know,” Jason said quietly. “I know it’s not worth anything now, but I tried to catch you. I wasn’t even thinking, I just saw the railing break, and - but it didn’t matter, anyway. I was too late.”

“So you didn’t kill me, though.” Tim said after a moment

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t my fault.”

They stood in silence for a while, as Tim processed that. Then he asked “So why did you bring me to the manor, then?”

“If I’d left you there, your teammates would have found you first,” Jason said after a pause. “That was never the point: the message was meant for Bruce.”

Tim wondered how it was possible, for Jason to hold so much hate. He wondered how Bruce could be so blind to his son’s trauma, how Dick could be so selfish in his grief. And he wondered how his death could possibly have made such a big difference.

Jason let out a breath, cheeks puffing out as his breath fogged in the cool October air. “Yeah. We’re pretty messed up, right? Guess you made a mistake, skipping over that stone wall.”

Tim blinked, startled at the thought. Then he smiled. “Nah,” he said, and leaned over to bump lightly against Jason’s arm. “You kidding? Best decision of my life.”

On day twenty-nine, Tim thought they had it. The simulations ran true, the conductor held the charge, and the anomalous readings were the exact same ones that had occurred when Tim first appeared in this dimension.

And then they threw a tennis ball through, and it exploded on impact.

“This,” Dick said, “Is why we don’t experiment with live subjects.”

“Why?” Tim demanded. He turned to glower at Bruce, as though he would have the answers. “Why isn’t this working?”

Bruce said nothing, only scrolled through the diagnostic readings with a frown on his face.

“It was going to work!” Tim insisted. They’d been working on this for four hours that afternoon already, and Tim could feel the heaviness of coffee-deprivation pulling at his eye-lids. “Why didn’t it work?”

“Come on,” Dick said, pulling him away. “Let’s take a break while Bruce looks at the readings. Come back with fresh eyes.”

Tim grumbled, but let himself be led upstairs and in search of a snack and some much needed caffeine.

Fifteen minutes later he was feeling much better, munching on an almond cookie and drinking a fresh cup of coffee. Maybe it was the magnetic anomaly, he mused, licking the crumbs off his fingers and eyeing the full plate on the table. Did magnetospheric anomalies cause things to spontaneously burst into flames?

“You don’t have to go, you know,” Dick said abruptly. “You’re always welcome here, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Tim said, startled. Of course he was welcome here, Bruce had said so at the beginning. “Yeah, I know that.”

“Would it be so bad, then,” Dick asked, and for some reason his gaze was fixed on the pantry door instead of on Tim, “if the portal never worked?”

Tim felt his fingers go cold, and he drew his coffee in closer to his chest. “Dick....”

“I mean - what if you’re stuck here? We don’t know how this thing works. It’s dangerous - what if it reacts differently to humans? Even if we test it with biological organisms, we can never truly know -”

“Dick -”

“Would it really be so terrible,” Dick insisted, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice as he finally looked up, “if you had to stay here?”

Tim stared at Dick. At this man who was like a brother to him - who was his brother, in his home dimension. Saw the creases in his brow, the slump in his shoulders, the smothered grief which seemed to pervade his entire body.

“I have to go home,” Tim whispered.

“Why can’t this be your home?”

Because he had a family waiting for him. He had Dick and Jason and Damian, Bruce and Alfred, and he’d been missing for twenty-nine days. Because he didn’t belong here; because in this world, he was already dead.

“Dick,” Tim pleaded, trying to keep his voice steady. “You can’t - you have to let me go home.”

Dick stared at him, face pale in the evening light. Then his expression shuttered, and Tim knew - he knew he was about to put on a mask, crack a joke with a smile, run and hide and pretend this conversation had never happened.

“Dick. Please.”

And then Dick’s expression shattered, and he just started crying, right there in the middle of the kitchen. It was so sudden that for a moment Tim froze, unsure what to do, but then he remembered when his dad had died. He remembered Bruce pulling him close, and later Dick doing the same, so he down his coffee and walked over and wrapped his arms around his older brother and held him, just like he had in the graveyard.

“I need to go, Dick,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I need to go home.”

That night, alone in his room, Tim sat down at his desk and pulled out a sheaf of paper. He didn’t know how he’d gotten here or how he’d get back, if it would be by his own design or another accident when he least expected it. Either way, he wanted to be prepared.

Dear Dick, he wrote, the fine tip of the pen scratching against the soft paper. This is in case I don’t get the chance to say goodbye.

“So,” Tim said, on day thirty-one. It had now been nearly two weeks since Jason had “moved” into Drake Manor, and so far the tentative peace that had been established had held. “What do you think?”

“Well, it’s loads better than Arkham,” Jason said frankly. He looked around the main sitting-room they were contemplating, and added: “Lots of breakable shit, for when Bruce inevitably pisses me off.”

“Or, you know,” Tim said. “You could sell it instead. Most of this stuff is worth heaps of money.”

“Ooh, then I could retire,” Jason said. “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Take up beekeeping.” He smirked.

“So you’re definitely not going back to the manor, then?” Tim asked. It wasn’t really surprising; his own Jason would start picking fights with literally everyone if he spent more than three consecutive nights at the manor, and this Jason wasn’t on nearly as good terms with Bruce as Tim’s was.

“He looks at me and sees a ghost,” Jason said after a moment. “No one should have to live like that.”

“Just - you won’t leave, though, right? You’ll keep trying?”

Jason was silent for just long enough that Tim actually started to worry, before he shrugged. “It was a good life, at the manor,” he said quietly. Almost as though it were a secret - as though it were something that needed to be protected, kept close so that the demons didn’t steal the memories away. “It was good, and - and if he’ll just see me, maybe we can try again.”

“Well,” Tim said after a moment. He poked the couch, where he used to stay up nights playing Mario Kart and eating Doritos and M&Ms just because he could. “You’ll have to dust a bit. Maybe rearrange.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, perking up a little bit. “Yeah, I’ll have to reorganize. What do you think?” He turned to the west wall, holding his arms out in a picture: “A whole bookshelf of Jane Austen and Shakespeare over here, and maybe then - do you think it makes sense to organize books chronologically? I do.” He nodded, and let his arms fall loosely to his side, looking around the dusty sitting room. “Maybe some plants, to liven up the place. What do you think about a cat?”

“I could never take care of plants, much less a cat,” Tim hummed. He liked the idea of Jason here - of someone living here, a young man to take the place of the ghost of a boy who had never truly belonged. “You could plant some mint.”

Jason sent him a scandalized look. “I’ll plant mint on your grave,” he threatened, and Tim frowned, not understanding - but then Jason shrugged, his face falling into a more serious expression. “I won’t. I’ll get you some daffodils, and they’ll come up next spring.”

Tim smiled at the thought. “Snowdrops, too?”

“Sure.” Jason hesitated, then added “And I’ll keep an eye out, too. You know. On your grave. Just in case....”

“Oh,” Tim said. “I mean, yeah.” He swallowed. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

It happened the same way it had before - that was, completely by accident. Tim was trotting through the woods, winding his way down the new path being worn between Drake Manor and Wayne Manor. He was thinking of bees, and daffodils, and Jason keeping watch over his grave, and he wasn’t watching where he was going.

Tim tripped over nothing, arms out to catch himself on the soft humus of the balsam grove, and the world went dark before he hit the ground.

Chapter Text

This, Tim thought groggily, was surely the worst headache he had ever had. And it definitely didn’t help that he was outside on the rain-soaked street: it didn’t help that the rough concrete beneath his cheek shook with traffic, or that an ambulance chose just that moment to go wailing by.

“Christ,” Tim groaned, pushing himself wearily to his feet and steadying himself against the slick wall of the alley. It was raining steadily, too consistent to be a drizzle but not quite heavy enough to be a down-pour. He squinted, looking around, and - yup, this was the exact spot he’d been when he tripped the first time around. This was where he’d been when he first hit his head, and ended up in the wrong dimension.

“Hello?” Tim said, wincing as he reached up to activate his comm. He frowned when nothing happened, tapping it again. “This is Robin, does anyone read me?”

When still nothing happened, he took the earpiece out to examine it, and sighed. It had run out of battery, which ... wasn’t unexpected, he supposed. It just meant he had to figure this out on his own, and with the mother of all headaches to boot.

“Okay, Robin, you can do this,” he muttered, reaching a gloved hand up to rub at his eyes. His hair was already soaked through, and he could feel his arms starting to get cold. “Where....” He couldn’t think with this headache. He needed coffee.

The nearest coffee shop was five streets away. Tim wasn’t stupid enough to walk down Gotham’s streets alone when it was dark and cold and raining, but he was still out of it enough that when he walked into the warm shop in full uniform he barely noticed the stares he was attracting. He walked up to the low counter, dripping puddles in his wake, and shoved a crumpled ten-dollar bill across towards the waiter with a mumbled order of double espresso one cream, no sugar.

“Large,” he added, reaching up to rub his eyes. “You can keep the change.”

Five minutes and one burnt tongue later, Tim’s headache was on the mend and he was feeling well enough to take stock of his new situation. And that, unfortunately, meant that he was feeling well enough to start panicking.

“Okay,” he murmured to himself, pulling his phone from his belt. “Okay, don’t panic.” He didn’t need to panic. What Tim needed to do was a) make sure he was in the right dimension this time and b) get in contact with the Batcave. Two steps. Simple.

But. It would be much more simple if both his communicators and his phone were not currently dead.

Tim was just considering whether or not he should ask a stranger to borrow their phone when the small bell above the door chimed, and a small figure stepped into the cafe. They were dressed in a dark tunic and leggings, hooded cloak pulled up to obscure their face, and in the half second it took Tim to recognize the figure as Damian the younger boy had already made a beeline straight for him.

“Oh my god, Damian -”

“What was the method by which I first attempted to eliminate you?” Damian demanded, his voice quiet and clear, eyes cold. They were drawing stares from the other cafe-goers and a few were stealthily raising their phones to snap pictures, but Tim couldn’t bring himself to care.

“You pushed me off B’s T-Rex, after I saved you from being eaten by it,” Tim responded, equally quiet. “D -”

“You have paid for your coffee, yes?” Damian asked. He took firm hold of Tim’s wrist and pulled him to his feet, starting for the door. Tim just had time to grab his cup, hurrying to keep up as Damian tugged him out of the cafe and into the cold October rain. They ended up in a sheltered doorway two alleys over, Tim clutching his coffee as Damian took a step back, head tilted up as he eyed the taller boy.

“Where,” Damian said finally, “have you been?”

“It was an alternate dimension, I don’t know what happened. D, how long have I been gone?”

“It has been thirty-two days since you disappeared on patrol with Batman. There was a physical anomaly in an alleyway on your patrol route, but no other evidence leading to your whereabouts.”

“Right,” Tim said, feeling his stomach drop. Of course, this wasn’t surprising. He’d expected there to be a passage of time, it would have been strange if there hadn’t been; but still, he’d hoped it had just been a day. Maybe three days, even, but - no. He’d been missing for one month. “Where are the others?”

“You said you were in an alternate dimension,” Damian said, instead of answering Tim’s question. “What was the difference between the dimensions?” In other words; how could Damian be sure that it was his Tim who had made it back?

“I was dead, in the other dimension,” Tim said. You were Robin. “Look, I don’t know what happened - I don’t know how I ended up there and I don’t know how I got back, but I’m here now, I’m fine, and - everyone’s okay, right? B, Nightwing, Red Hood - they’re all okay?”

Damian surveyed him silently for a moment. He was dressed for patrol, and Tim was strangely relieved to find that it wasn’t the Robin uniform. He was dressed instead in darker shades, a burgundy tunic over black leggings and dark boots. His cape was lined with silver, hood pulled up over hair made wet by the rain. There was a small bat symbol pinned to his chest.

“No one is injured,” Damian said eventually, which absolutely did not answer Tim’s question, but then he raised a gloved hand to his ear and said “Oracle, I have found Robin. He appears to be unharmed. Please inform my father of our location.”

Tim puffed out his cheeks, trying to hold back his frustration. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he was angry about, but all of a sudden he just wanted to hit something. But he couldn’t do that, there wasn’t anyone there but Damian, and even if the brat might deserve it sometimes Tim still couldn’t punch him. Given Tim’s luck, the kid would take it as an excuse to justifiably murder him. So Tim released his breath, took another sip of his coffee, and leaned back against the rough wall to wait.

The next five minutes were just about the longest five minutes of Tim’s life to date. For lack of anything better to do he kept sipping at his coffee, trying to ignore that way Damian kept glancing at him. Like he was expecting Tim run off, or to simply disappear (it was similar to the way Dick had watched him in the alternate dimension, and Tim wasn’t sure how to feel about that). And then there was the far-off growl of the Batmobile getting louder and then it was there, spraying water from the puddles as it pulled to a halt in the narrow alley.

Batman was out of the door in two seconds flat, and before he could blink Tim had been pulled into a crushing hug, strong arms and dark cape wrapping comfortingly around him.

“Robin,” Batman growled, his voice almost (almost) cracking on the word, and Tim inexplicably felt tears spring to his eyes. So he clung tighter, burying his face in the familiar dark armor, and for the first time in over four weeks he let himself relax. He was home. Batman was here, Bruce was here, and everything was going to be okay.

Back in the cave, Tim changed out of his soaked uniform and into a loose sweater (the one Damian had been wearing in the alternate dimension) and soft jeans. When he emerged from the locker room, Bruce was waiting with Alfred. He lifted his arm to point to the far side of the cave. “Medbay. Now.”

“I’m fine,” Tim tried to reassure them, but he let himself be herded to the nearest cot and sat still as Alfred reached for a vial to draw his blood. “Really, B, I’m not - it was just an alternate dimension, I really don’t know what happened. But - are you okay?”

Because now that he wasn’t in uniform, Bruce did not look okay. Now that they were safe back in the cave, now that Tim could really look at him, he looked stressed. He looked like he had lost weight, and he looked tired in a way Tim hadn’t seen since - well. Since Jason died.

“I am fine,” Bruce said, his eyes following Alfred’s hands as the old butler tied a band tight around Tim’s upper arm. When his gaze lifted to once again meet Tim’s he looked grim. “You disappeared in the middle of patrol,” he said, and settled on the edge of the cot nearest Tim’s. “We couldn’t find a trace of you. What happened?”

“I tripped,” Tim said. His gaze flicked to Damian as the younger boy slipped into the medbay, now dressed in matching gray sweatpants and hoodie. “I really don’t know - we were trying to figure it out, in the other dimension. Me and you and Dick -” Tim paused, and frowned. “Where are Jason and Dick?”

This had been bothering him. Damian was here, and Bruce and Alfred, but Damian was being stubbornly tight-lipped and he hadn’t seen any sign of Nightwing or Red Hood having been in the cave recently. And Tim knew there was nothing to worry about (really, there wasn’t) but he was having uncomfortable flashbacks to when he had shown up in the alternate dimension’s manor to an absent Dick and incarcerated Jason.

“They were following up on a lead near the docks,” Bruce replied. “Oracle has let them know that you were found, they are on their way here.”

“Okay,” Tim sighed, breathing out obediently as Alfred lifted the stethoscope to his chest. “Okay, that - but they’re fine, too?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, and frowned. “Were they not, in the other dimension?”

Had Dick been okay, grieving the fall of his second family? Had Jason been fine, locked up with his murderer? Tim stared at Bruce, and for a moment (for just a moment) he considered lying. He could see shadows in Bruce’s eyes, old grief brought inexplicably to the surface. And when Tim looked at Alfred, when he looked at Damian, he saw the weight that his absence had left on them. And he thought does Bruce really need to know? Will his knowing make any of this better?

But he’d already waited too long. Already Bruce could see the hesitation in his eyes, and Tim knew that if he lied now it wouldn’t matter anyway.

“Breathe for me, Master Tim,” Alfred said gently, placing the cool weight of the stethoscope on his back. “In and out, please, through your mouth.”

“I died,” Tim said, once he had released his breath, and saying it felt like a dream. It felt like he was drowning, like there was suddenly an uncrossable expanse of water separating him from the rest of his family. “I died, Bruce, and you fell apart.”

“You died?” Bruce demanded, and suddenly he was on his feet again. “You said -”

“No,” Tim snapped, tensing as Alfred attached the blood pressure cuff to his arm. “Not me - the me in the other universe.”

Deep breaths, a voice in his head murmured. God, why was he getting angry again?

Before he could think too hard about it, and before Bruce could work himself up any more, the cave was filled with the familiar sound of twin engines pulling in - Jason and Dick, back from patrol. Damian leaned out of the medbay to check, then stepped back quickly as Nightwing came barreling in. Tim only had one second to brace himself before Dick had him wrapped in a strong embrace.

“Christ, Timmy,” Dick muttered, his voice thick beside Tim’s ear. “Where have you been?”

“Alternate dimension,” Tim said numbly, returning Dick’s hug. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Dick repeated, and he sounded a little hysterical. “Am I okay? Tim, you - you were gone, are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Tim said, the words falling automatically from his mouth. Sorry I disappeared, sorry I died, sorry I left. I’m sorry. “I’m okay. Where’s Jason?”

“Here,” Jason said, and then he was there, standing at the entrance of the medbay, red helmet tucked under his arm. He looked tense, his expression guarded. “Alternate universe, huh?”

“Timothy,” Bruce growled, and at his voice the entire room fell still. Damian straightened, Jason stiffened, and Dick pulled away, frowning between Bruce and Tim. “What do you mean you died?”

“It was an alternate dimension,” Tim said again, like that made any difference at all. Like there wasn’t another version of his family, mourning the loss of another version of Tim. Like Tim hadn’t stood on his own grave and read the inscription; son, brother, friend. “Things were different there.”

The problem with living with a family of detectives was that it was next to impossible to tell a convincing lie. Even a white lie, even a lie of omission to conceal the terrible truth - even simply an omission, something meant to protect, to keep safe - lying to the World’s Greatest Detective was a mission meant for failure, and Tim had never been especially good at lying. He’d never needed to be, when a simple forged letter and guileless smile could point his teachers in the opposite direction.

So when Tim’s eyes darted to Jason, Bruce’s gaze followed. And when Jason looked up, he met Bruce’s gaze for only a second before his expression shuttered, and he turned around and walked out of the room.

“No,” Tim said. Then, when no one else spoke: “No!” What the fuck was happening? Why was everyone just letting Jason walk away? He tried to stand, but Alfred’s firm hands kept him in place.

“Master Tim, I am not yet finished -”

“No!” Tim shouted, shoving Alfred away, and then he was standing, hands fisted at his sides as he glared at them all. At Dick, who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks; at Damian, watching silently from the shadows; at Bruce, who held such inconceivable guilt in his eyes. And Tim didn’t know why he was so angry, or even who he was angry at - was it his family standing around him now? Was it the family he’d left behind in that strange mirror of a dimension? (Or was it, perhaps, the boy who disappeared; the boy who left, the boy who died, the boy was so good at making himself invisible that he never considered he might be anything more?)

“Was it all for nothing?” Tim demanded furiously, a pleading note creeping in against his will. “All I ever wanted was to help. And then I leave and you - what? You just fall apart? Did anything I do matter at all?”

“Of course it mattered,” Dick started, but before he could finish Bruce held up a hand.

“Dick,” he said into the silence that followed, “I would appreciate it if you could check on Jason. Damian, I do believe you have a report to complete - you also have school tomorrow, so you may use the computer upstairs once you are ready for bed. Alfred will assist you.”

Tim took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he struggled to get himself back under control. When he finally opened his eyes again everyone was gone, and Bruce was kneeling before him.

“Tim,” Bruce said gently. “That’s not the way it works.”

“What do you mean?” Tim mumbled.

“You entered our lives and made yourself a home here,” Bruce said. “Did you really think that your disappearance would go unremarked?”

No. (Yes?) “That doesn’t matter,” Tim insisted. “I just - I need -”

“What?” Bruce asked, when Tim stuttered to a halt.

I need to know you’ll be okay. Tim took a deep breath, and lifted his hands to press against his eyes. Damn it. “I d-don’t understand.”

“Tim,” Bruce sighed. “You’re upset because Jason left. Because I blamed him for your death in that alternate dimension - yes?” At Tim’s nod, he continued. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I would never do that. When you disappeared, I didn’t know what had happened: you vanished without a trace, Tim. Of course I considered it might be Jason - I thought Damian might have done it. It would not have been the first time either of your brothers made an attempt on your life.”

“Yeah,” Tim muttered. “But they didn’t do it.” Somehow it made him feel a little better, that Bruce had considered Damian alongside Jason.

“No. They didn’t. There was no evidence to suggest that they did, and once they were informed of your disappearance they both helped in the search. Jason especially, I might add.”

“Okay,” Tim said, taking another deep breath. “Okay, okay.” He swiped at his eyes, trying to shove the anger and the confusion away. Bruce didn’t need those, he needed Tim. “Okay, but you’re not allowed to - to stop. If I leave, if I die, B, you can’t just stop.”

“I am allowed to grieve for my son.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. This had never been part of the plan, Tim wasn’t supposed to be - he wasn’t - he was Tim Drake. The neighbor kid, the stalker, the replacement. The third Robin, the placeholder. And Tim loved being Robin, really he did, but he had never considered himself equal to Dick, equal to Jason. He’d known his death would be unfortunate, if it ever came to pass. He’d just never considered, until he was confronted with the reality, that his death might be devastating.

Tim covered his face again, trying to think. Trying to convince himself that it was okay, he was okay, Bruce was okay. That everyone in the alternate dimension would be okay. It was several minutes before he found the courage to lower his hands again, and when he did it was to see Bruce still knelt before him, elbow lifted to rest on the cot.

“Hey,” Bruce said, and smiled.

“You’re still on the floor,” Tim mumbled, dropping his hands to his sides.

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you, like, sixty? Practically? You’ve got bad knees.”

“I think I’ll manage,” Bruce said mildly, but let Tim offer him a hand up anyway.

Jason was gone by the time Tim and Bruce left the medbay. When they went up to the manor, they found Dick waiting for them in the sitting room.

“Jason left,” he said, wrapping Tim in yet another hug. “Went back to his place in the city, I think. I convinced him not to keep patrolling tonight, though, and Babs is making sure he keeps his promise.”

“Is he coming back?” Tim asked, trying not to sound too anxious and clingy.

Dick hesitated, and Tim tensed. Dick sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “He was pretty upset, Tim. He knows we don’t blame him, but I think we should give him a bit of space.”

“Okay,” Tim sighed, frustrated but too exhausted to do anything about it.

“- for dinner? I just think -”

Tim hesitated, hovering near the door to Dick’s room. It had been three days since he’d come back, and still it felt like everyone was walking on eggshells. Dick was staying in the manor, Damian stalked Tim like he might vanish at any moment, and Bruce had yet to allow him back out on patrol. And since that first night, Tim hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Jason.

Dick sighed, and Tim strained to listen. “Jesus, Jason, I’m not -” he broke off again, then said abruptly “Look. I’m only asking because Tim’s worried, okay? At least respond to his texts.”

Also. Jason hadn’t been responding to any of Tim’s texts or voicemails.

“Bruce doesn’t - fuck,” Dick muttered, and then before Tim could so much as blink Dick was standing in the door before him, eyebrows raised. Tim froze.

Dick sighed again, this time with a distinct tone of resignation. “You have my permission to break into Jason’s house,” he said after a moment, then turned and walked back into his room.

Chapter Text

For once, it wasn’t raining. It was still overcast, sure, but when Tim snuck in through Jason’s window (careful not to trip the alarm, and equally careful not to knock over the cactus) at least he wasn’t soaking wet from the rain. He rolled onto Jason’s couch, then turned to slide the window shut behind him.

Jason’s apartment was homey, which had surprised Tim the first time he was there. It wasn’t like his bolt holes and safe houses, which were usually only stocked with the bare minimum (although the bare minimum often included a sizable collection of books, which amused Tim to no end). Jason’s apartment had rugs, and furniture, and little memorabilia placed carefully around the sitting room, wall to ceiling shelves creating a veritable library of more books than Tim had read in his entire life. The place was well lit, the kitchen well stocked, and there were even a few photos arranged carefully around the room.

Tim kicked his sneakers into the corner near the door, and wandered into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

It took Jason two hours to return home. During this time Tim worked away at his email, the hundreds that had built up in his absence slowly dwindling as he responded and deleted in equal measure. He finished his coffee, made himself a bowl of cereal, and was just considering fiddling with Jason’s TV when there was the sound of heavy boots stomping down the hall and then the door swung open and Jason was there, standing frozen in the doorway.

He wasn’t wearing his helmet, and the look on his face was one of clear, unmistakable panic.

“Hi Jason,” Tim said after a moment, setting down his phone.

Jason’s expression shifted quickly into one of annoyance and he stepped stiffly forward, kicking the door shut behind him. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t answering my texts,” Tim replied. “And I know you got the wrong idea about what happened in the other dimension, so I’m here to set the record straight.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jason said curtly, bending down to unstrap his boots. “Does Bruce know you’re here?”

“Yes,” Tim said. He tapped his watch. “Seriously, it’s like I’m on house arrest. And yes, it does matter. You didn’t kill me, Jason.”

Jason gave him a flat look, then walked past him to his bedroom. Tim stood to follow.

“It happened when you attacked me last year. It was an accident. Obviously it didn’t happen here, but you - the you in the other dimension - you said I fell, and that you tried to save me. It was an accident, Jason. That’s all.”

“And let me guess; Bruce sent me to Black Gate? Or was it Arkham?”

“It was Arkham,” Tim said quietly.

“Right. Because that’s where the real criminals go.” Jason pulled a clean shirt over his head, and turned to face Tim. “So what makes this universe so different then, Tim? An accident? A mistake? Was that it, just a twist of luck? Because Dick’s told me what you said. Everything else was the same, I was the same. So don’t you think I should be locked up in Arkham too?”

“The mistake was when you killed me there; not you when you didn’t kill me here,” Tim said sharply.

“How can you be so sure of that?” Jason sneered, and Tim scowled.

“Come on, Jason. It was an accid -”

“I tried to kill you,” Jason interrupted flatly, “and apparently there is a universe in which I succeeded. Nothing about that sounds like an accident to me.”

“Fine. Fine,” Tim exclaimed, exasperated. “How about this; Jason, I forgive you for trying to kill me!”

Jason blinked at him, and then to Tim complete and utter surprise he laughed. “Did you know,” he said after a moment, tone wry, “that’s almost exactly what I said to Bruce before I asked him to kill the Joker?”

They stood in silence for a moment, and then Jason let out a breath, his shoulders slumping. “Fuck it,” he said. “I don’t want to do this. And I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. You want a sandwich?”

Tim smiled tentatively, feeling himself relax as the tension melted out of the air. “I already had something,” he said, gesturing to the cereal bowl on the coffee table. Jason rolled his eyes, and stepped into the kitchen. Tim pulled out a chair at the small table, and watched as the older boy started pulling ingredients from the fridge. “Jason,” he said after a moment. “Can I ask you something.”

“If you’re asking my permission, I’m tempted to say no.”

“So?”

Jason sighed. “Fine. What?”

“In the other universe, Jason said Bruce slit his throat when he asked him to kill the Joker. Do you know what he was talking about?” Tim didn’t even know why he was asking this. It was ridiculous, it was absurd, his Bruce would never do that. It made him sick just to think about, but he just ... he had to make sure.

For a long time, Jason didn’t say anything. And when he did speak, he didn’t sound surprised, or horrified, or any of the other things Tim had expected - he sounded startled. “Uh. He told you about that?”

Tim’s mouth went dry. “What?”

“I mean, yeah, it sucked,” Jason said. He actually reached up a hand and rubbed his neck. Like Tim had seen him do hundreds of times, when he was anxious or angry or - or when he and Bruce were fighting -

“But it was an accident; he was aiming for my gun. He missed.”

“Jason, what?”

“Batman isn’t perfect, Tim,” Jason said, his gaze hardening slightly. He slapped the two sides of his sandwich together, and reached for a knife. “And I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“No,” Tim insisted, pushing himself away from the table. “This isn’t okay! You could have died, Jason, what the hell -”

“I didn’t, though. And honestly, it’s not like I haven’t done worse.” Jason’s eyes drifted meaningfully to Tim’s throat, and Tim scowled fiercely, ruthlessly quelling the instinct to reach up and rub his own neck.

“You never meant to kill me, though,” Tim started, and then when Jason looked like he was about to interrupt: “No! You said, you said it was the Pit! You said the Pit made you try to kill me!”

“The Pit never made me do anything, Tim,” Jason said wearily, an echo of a conversation already had. He looked uncomfortable now, crossing his arms and looking away. “It just makes me feel things stronger, it’s not some kind of - mind control, fuck, I don’t know. You all just ... leapt to conclusions, okay? And I let you.”

Tim stood rooted to the floor, staring at Jason. “Why?”

“Because it was easier to blame the Pit,” Jason said quietly, “than to take the responsibility myself.”

“So it was true, then,” Tim said numbly. “Were you really trying to kill me?”

Jason sighed, finally lifting his head to meet Tim’s gaze. “If it had come to it, I would have,” he said tiredly. “I had a point to prove, and if killing you would have made Bruce listen ... I think I would have done it.”

So in the universe where he died it had been an accident, and in the universe where he lived....

“Well,” Tim said after a moment, looking away. He swallowed. “It wouldn’t have worked, anyway. Damian took Robin after you killed me.”

“Yeah,” Jason sighed. “Fuck, Tim. You know I’m sorry, right?”

“Yeah,” Tim echoed, and his voice sounded flat even to his own ears. He couldn’t bring himself to care. “It’s fine, I’m over it.”

“Listen -”

“I’m going to call Bruce,” Tim said abruptly, and turned and walked out of the kitchen.

He called Bruce. He shut himself in Jason’s bedroom and yelled at Bruce for a solid fifteen minutes until Jason came in and confiscated his phone, holding a very stilted, very brief conversation with Bruce before hanging up.

“It was an accident,” he said irritably, releasing Tim’s arm as he hung up. “Practice what you preach, why don’t you?”

“That’s different,” Tim snapped. “Bruce is your father, Jason!”

“So what - filicide is worse than fratricide? When it was a fucking accident?”

Tim glared. Jason glared right back.

“Will you give me my phone?” Tim muttered at last, looking away. It wasn’t okay - it was different, and he didn’t think Jason should have forgiven Bruce that easily. But he also wasn’t stupid - he knew when he was being hypocritical.

“Are you just going to call the old man back and yell at him some more?”

Tim eyed Jason. “How about this,” he said after a moment. “I promise not to yell at Bruce, and you come over for dinner.”

“Or -“

“Or,” Tim interrupted, “I leave and go yell at B in person. I don’t need my phone to do this, Jason.”

“Brat,” Jason said after a moment, tossing Tim’s phone over. “Fine. Just tonight, though.”

“Just tonight,” Tim agreed, and thought that at least he was a better liar than Jason would ever be.

Dinner wasn’t a complete disaster. Bruce tiptoed around Jason like he was a wild cat in danger of being scared off, and Tim tried to ignore the way Jason got more and more nervous as the night went on, the way that his shoulders lifted and his scowl deepened whenever Bruce so much as glanced in his direction.

This was normal, Tim tried to tell himself. This was fine, this was what fixing things looked like. Jason had tried to kill Tim, Bruce had almost killed Jason. It was fine.

“Can I come on patrol tonight?” Tim asked, as Alfred served them dessert. “I’m fine, I’m ready, I swear.”

Bruce frowned. “We still don’t know why you were sent to the other dimension, Tim.”

“Do you have any leads?” Tim asked.

“No.”

“Then let me come,” Tim said stubbornly. “It’s been a week, B, I’m fine. I’m here. Maybe we won’t ever know what happened, but I’ll have to start patrolling again at some point. Why not tonight? Dick and Jason can come too, that way we don’t have to overextend on patrol.”

“I’m game,” Dick shrugged, glancing at Damian. “D can come with me if you want to stick with Robin.”

“Fine,” Bruce said after a moment. “You may come on patrol. We will be keeping in constant contact, though - and Alfred will be monitoring everyone’s trackers from the cave.”

Jason snorted. “Keep your hands off my trackers, I don’t need you micromanaging me.”

Dick sighed. “Jason -”

“Nope. Not happening. Either you let me keep my privacy - which is a basic human right, I might add - or I ditch the trackers altogether. And who knows,” Jason added, “maybe Tim isn’t the only one with an affinity for ghost circles. Ever wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t come back from the dead?”

“How about let’s not find out,” Dick said.

Later that evening, as they were getting ready in the cave, Jason sidled up beside Tim. “So,” he said, when Tim glanced at him. “What did yours say?”

“What did my what say?” Tim asked blankly.

“Your grave. Your memorial. We’re both dead Robins now, what did yours say?”

“Oh,” Tim said quietly. He glanced at the corner where Jason’s old suit stood, enshrined in a cage of glass. Jason’s gaze followed his, and then he kicked Tim’s ankle. “So? Spill, Replacement.”

“My grave was boring,” Tim said reluctantly. “Um. Just my name, and the date. Brother, son, friend.”

“More personal than mine,” Jason commented. “And your memorial?”

“Never forgotten,” Tim mumbled, and Jason snorted.

“Wow. Mine’s way better.”

Tim shot him a look, fastening his cape about his neck. “You know,” he said, “I used to like your memorial. But then I met you, and -” Tim lowered his voice. “How could he write that? I mean, it’s not even about you.”

Jason frowned at him, his earlier levity falling away at Tim’s tone. “It is, though.”

“It’s not! It’s about Robin, and being a ‘good soldier’ - like what, you can’t be good unless you’re dead?”

“No,” Jason said slowly. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Good soldiers are brave,” Jason said, and now his voice was quiet too. “Good soldiers are compassionate and kind, and for every life they take they try to help a hundred more.”

“But it still should have been, I don’t know - you weren’t just a soldier -”

“I died, Tim,” Jason said, interrupting. “Robin was my childhood - innocence and happiness and ‘those sweet golden years’ and all that. And that all ended when the warehouse exploded in Ethiopia.”

“But -”

“But nothing,” Jason said. “Those were some of the best years of my life. Being Robin saved my life in more ways than I care to count, and if it took my life too in the end then so be it. I was Robin, and I was good at it.”

“It should say a good Robin, then,” Tim argued.

“Nope,” Jason said, popping the p. “Robin didn’t die. You made sure of that, despite everything.”

Tim fell silent, studying the far corner as he absentmindedly buckled his gloves. It still bothered him, but he supposed it wasn’t his memorial. It was Jason’s, and in a way it was Bruce’s as well.

“I guess I did,” he said after a while, when he had decided to let the matter drop. He reached for his staff, twirling the weapon expertly through the air, and when he looked up at Jason he smiled. “I’m Robin now, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Damian was being civil, and to be quite honest it was kind of freaking Tim out. So one day, towards the middle of November, Tim cornered Damian in his room before dinner.

“Why aren’t you trying to kill me anymore?” he asked bluntly. Damian scowled up at him.

“If that was something you enjoyed, Drake, I will gladly take up the hobby again.”

“No thanks. But seriously. Should I be worried about you?”

Damian considered him for a moment, his round face solemn as he looked at Tim. Finally he said “The time of your absence was not as enjoyable as I had anticipated.” Tim frowned, and Damian continued. “Father was ... displeased by your apparent demise. Despite my assistance, he was performing far below his usual standards, and he would not allow me to take my rightful place at his side. Richard and Todd, too, were acting in a way uncharacteristic of their normal dispositions.”

“What do you mean?” Tim asked.

“They searched for you,” Damian replied. He wandered over to one of his shelves, lifting a slim knife and considering it before slipping it into his belt. “I do not believe Father knows the full lengths to which Nightwing and the Red Hood went to gain information pertaining to your disappearance.” Damian looked over his shoulder, his green gaze meeting Tim’s calmly. “I do not believe he needs to know, either.”

Lengths? What lengths would they have to go to for Batman to disapprove? Tim had been around Bruce during plenty of interrogations, and the man was far from gentle in his questioning. But, Tim thought, there was a line that even Batman (especially Batman) would never cross. And there was a duffel bag full of heads which indicated Jason’s stance on that particular line.

“The team was performing sub-optimally,” Damian continued, apparently oblivious to Tim’s distraction. “So no, I will not continue in my attempts to dispose of you: it appears that, despite your inferiority, you do in fact offer something of value to this team.”

“So you’re not going to try to kill me anymore because B wouldn’t like it?” Tim said dryly.

“That is a gross oversimplification -” Damian started irritably, but Tim interrupted him with a grin.

“Oh no, you care. Aw, Dami, that’s so sweet! Don’t worry, bud, I love you too -”

“Does it bother you,” Jason asked one night as they were taking a break from patrol together, “that I lied? About the Lazarus Pit, I mean. Are you angry that I would have killed you?”

Tim tilted his head back, thinking about it. When he’d researched the Lazarus Pit, he’d read about the side effects - about the pit madness, the way it washed away all your old scars (but not your old life), how there was a difference between giving someone a new life and bringing them back from an old one. It was true, it had been comforting to believe that Jason trying to murder him had been a product of this - that fact that Jason himself had actually considered murdering Tim hurt.

But the important part, in Tim’s mind, was that he hadn’t. He had stopped, he had tried to save Tim, and it wasn’t true what the other Jason had said. It did matter. Of course it mattered, it had always mattered.

“You know how I told you I was allergic to eggplant?” Tim said after a while, sweeping his staff out in a light stretch.

“Yeah,” Jason said slowly.

“I’m not. I just really, really hate the taste.”

“Tim - look. I just wanted to say: I’m sorry.”

Tim shrugged, and when he looked at Jason he found that he was able to meet his gaze, and not look away. “Yeah, well. We’re all liars, sometimes.”

Tim’s house was quiet. It was a familiar quiet, one that Tim had grown up with, and there was something about it that just put his teeth on edge. It wasn’t the quiet, necessarily - Tim paused on the doorstep, considering. It wasn’t that the house was empty: that had never particularly bothered him either. Perhaps ... perhaps it was the loneliness. The idea of one small boy growing up alone, unseen, unheard.

Tim had wondered, coming here, if he might be able to feel something of the other dimension. Here in Drake Manor, where there was no one else living to assert this universe’s presence, he’d wondered if perhaps he’d be able to feel the other Jason. But there was no one here, nothing but dead silence, so Tim turned and walked away, shutting the door behind him. There was one other place that he could check, anyway.

There wasn’t a trail weaving through the woods in this universe. Of course there was the main entrance to the graveyard, but Tim would have had to walk all the way down to the road and around if he wanted to use it, and it was quicker to cut through the mountain holly and fir anyway. So he pushed through the low-growing shrubs, making sure not to trip along the way until he found himself standing once again in the Drake Family plot of the small overgrown cemetery.

There were two graves standing in the old grass, tops dusted white by the first snow of November. Janet Drake. Jack Drake. And there was an empty patch of earth beside them, the thin stalks of summer’s grass turned brown by the winter’s arrival.

“I made it,” Tim said after a moment. This felt better, he decided, than talking to an empty house. “I’m home, and - and everyone’s okay, I think.”

A wind came up behind him, and Tim shivered.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he continued. “I don’t know if you’re going to stay dead, or if someone is going to resurrect you or something. I guess ... that wouldn’t be too bad, right? You wouldn’t mind too much - we like second chances.” Tim nodded. “Yeah. But, you know. No pressure.”

Again he fell silent, this time for longer. It was strange - Tim hadn’t actually died, but already he felt there had been this great shift. He felt like he’d been lost, and grieved, and that now he was getting his second chance at life. Now he could finally live, and his family could live with him.

“They’ll be okay,” he told the empty plot of grass anyway. “Your family, I mean. Don’t worry, I made sure of it. And I’m going to make sure of it here, too. Imagine that.” He smiled. “Timothy Drake, interdimensional problem solver. We’ve got each others’ backs.”

He stood there for a while, just thinking. Listening to the silence, and not feeling quite so alone. “Okay,” he said at last, letting out his breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

“Hey Dick. Yeah, I’m good. Hey, I was wondering - would it be okay if I came over sometime? You could show me around Blüdhaven, maybe we could patrol together. Oh - tonight? Yeah - no, yeah, I’m totally free. Great! Yeah, see you. Bye.”

“I will kill you!” Damian shouted, his voice cracking as it echoed through the cave. “I will eviscerate you, Drake, give me the keys to the Batmobile -”

“Tough luck, demon spawn,” Tim grinned, twirling the keys between his fingers as he lifted his mask to his face. “Mini assassins don’t get to drive until they’re sixteen years old. And if you think you’re getting rid of me you have another thing coming - I’m gonna be here until you’re old and gray.”

“Jason,” Tim said, draped across Jason’s sofa late on a Tuesday night. Jason grunted, not lifting his face from his book.

“Hm.”

“I’m glad you’re alive. And I’m glad you came back home.”